Renewable Energy and Economic Efficiency in the Framework of Sustainable Development: Malmquist Index and Tobit Model

Abstract

Today, energy is as important as labour, capital and technology for the growth of countries. As countries grow economically, they try to achieve the same or more amounts of output with fewer inputs. In other words, countries target efficiency based growth. As the economic growth of countries increases, their energy requirements also increase. Regarding countries that are not rich in domestic resources, this increase, imposes significant costs. On the other hand, the finite energy supply in countries rich in domestic resources is an important problem. That is why the phenomenon of renewable energy has become a trend all over the world. In addition to reducing import dependence on energy, new policies are required to reduce the effects of climate changes and to protect natural resources. That is why; renewable energy and economic efficiency are an attractive research area. In the study, efficiency scores were obtained by calculating the Malmquist total factor productivity index in the period 1992–2018 for 10 countries among the N11 countries. Then, the efficiency values obtained by using the two stage estimation method were used as the dependent variables. The test results based on Tobit regression indicated that the increase in the supply of renewable energy positively increases economic efficiency. It can be said that the supply of renewable energy will lead to economic efficiency in the future.