The Role of Renewable Energy Generation in Sustainable Economic Growth: The Case of Turkey

Abstract

Energy is a crucial factor in both the production and consumption process. It is a critical component not only for economic growth but also for social, technological, and environmental issues. With the events and facts in these areas in the last fifty years, the importance of the energy factor has more increased, and the search for alternative energy sources has accelerated. Thus, renewable energy sources have started to be more preferred by considering sustainable growth goals. This study aims to investigate the role of renewable energy generation on economic growth for the period of 1990-2017. The study employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method by using gross domestic product, capital stock, employment, and renewable energy generation data of Turkey. According to the findings, increases in capital stock, employment, and renewable energy production affect economic growth positively.