Environmental analysis of Turkey's aggregated and sector-level CO2 emissions.

Abstract

Turkey's ecological footprint has recently been increasing, while its biocapacity has been decreasing. Furthermore, the country's CO2 emissions have been rising substantially in recent decades. Therefore, this study aims to identify the factors that are changing the CO2 emissions in Turkey, not only at the aggregated level but also for the sectors with the highest increases in CO2 emissions, namely, electricity and heat production. Research into the aggregated CO2 emissions and the sector-level analysis covered the period 1990-2017. The Shapley decomposition method was utilized, and the impacts of five factors, namely, scale effect, migration effect, population, energy intensity, and carbon intensity, were considered to examine the changes in total CO2 emissions. Regarding the analysis of the electricity and heat production sectors, the roles of four factors, namely, income effect, electricity intensity, fuel structure, and pollution coefficient, were investigated by using the same decomposition approach. The results showed that the scale effect is the primary driver of acceleration of total CO2 emissions in Turkey; population, migration, and carbon intensity effects follow the scale effect in this respect. Energy intensity significantly decreases Turkey's total emissions. For the electricity and heat production sectors, the Shapley decomposition results showed that the income effect, electricity intensity, and fuel structure increase the country's CO2 emissions rapidly. The pollution coefficient was the only factor that decreased CO2 in these sectors in the studied period. This study reveals that Turkey is still deficient in terms of green development processes, which are essential for a sustainable future.