Investigating the Effects of Environmental and Energy Policies in Turkey Using an Energy Disaggregated CGE Model

This article investigates environmental and energy policies that Turkey needs to adopt on its way to a sustainable development path. A multi-sectoral CGE model is developed to analyze the effects of several environmental and energy policy scenarios available for the Turkish economy to attain a low-carbon society with a reduced reliance on fossil fuel imports. Domestic energy demand has significantly increased in Turkey over the past decades, and this has put a lot of pressure on policymakers as the economy greatly depends on imports of natural gas and oil as far as current energy consumption is concerned. The CGE model used in this study is based on an energy-disaggregated Social Accounting Matrix (SAM), constructed in previous work by the authors. The energy-disaggregated SAM serves as the benchmark database and the high disaggregation of the energy commodities and the electricity sector to include 8 different types of power generating sectors (5 of which are renewable energy sources) enables electric power substitution in the model. The energy-disaggregated SAM is further linked with satellite accounts which include data on derived energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The macroeconomic and environmental impacts of three distinct sets of scenarios are analyzed with respect to the baseline scenario. The first scenario simulates a 30% increase in energy efficiency in the production sectors and the residential sector and evidence is found for reaching the 21% GHG mitigation target set in Turkey’s pledge for Paris Agreement compliance by 2030. The second set of scenarios is the inclusion of a medium and high-level carbon tax rates for coal, oil and natural gas. The carbon tax scenarios produce significant effects on both emission reduction targets and substituting fossil fuel technologies with cleaner energy technologies. The third scenario estimates the effects of changes in world prices of energy on the Turkish economy. A 20% increase in world energy prices, i.e. oil, natural gas, and coal, induces substantial changes in the breakdown of TPES and the power-generating sector and puts a lot of pressure on the current account deficit of the country. A carbon tax policy proves to be the most viable scenario which leads to reduced energy intensities in all sectors, a 21% GHG emissions abatement, and a transformation of the energy sector towards having a low-carbon content along with a reduced reliance on fossil fuel imports.