Exploring CO2 emissions according to planned energy investments and policies: the case of Turkey

Abstract

Controlling CO2 emissions is the common task of all countries to cope with global warming and leave a clean environment. Therefore, in order to develop ecological plans and foresee the necessary measures, forecasting CO2 emissions is an important issue for the governments. Turkey’s CO2 emissions have increased significantly due to economic and industrial growth since 2000. Due to Turkey’s responsibility in the climate agreements, it needs to explore the CO2 emissions resulting from future investments and policies. In this study, an adaptive grey prediction model was proposed to forecast energy-related CO2 emission of Turkey for 2023 and 2030 based on planned energy investments and policies. The paper has addressed two scenarios that express the current usage level and the planned level where future investments are put into use in order to observe the change of CO2 emissions. The obtained results show that the amount of CO2 emissions in 2030 will decrease significantly thanks to nuclear energy investments according to the current scenario. However, in order to reduce the CO2 emissions of Turkey to desired levels, there is still a need to tighten energy policies and continue emission-free energy investments.