Energy-Growth-Environment: What is Turkey’s Place in the Triangle?

Abstract

In this study we focus on the energy consumption trends in Turkey first, and then we propose an international comparison in order to evaluate the relative performance of Turkey in the context of energy productivity and environmental efficiency. For this purpose, after we provide some distributional analysis using Gini coefficient and Theil index, we build up an “energy-growth-environment” index in order to analyze in detail energy productivity and environmental efficiency in 132 countries over the period from 1971 to 2005. The results indicate that: first, in Turkey fossil resources are used increasingly and this coal and petroleum biased energy use leads to a rise in carbon dioxide emissions; second, global trends in energy use and carbon dioxide emissions show that there is a convergence in both energy and environmental efficiency while the mean of these two variables remains stable; third, energy productivity in Turkey seems to be higher and more stable compared to the environmental efficiency.

Keywords

Energy, Growth, Environment, International Comparison.

Citation

Karanfil, Fatih, “Energy-Growth-Environment: What is Turkey’s Place in the Triangle?”, International Relations, Volume 5, Issue 20 (Winter 2009), pp. 1-26.

Affiliations

• Fatih Karanfil, Dr., Research Assistant, Galatasaray University, Department of Economics