Solar and Wind Energy: An Alternative Solution for the Problem of Jobless Economic Growth in Turkey

Year 2019, Volume: 3 Issue: 3, 110 - 130, 30.09.2019

Hüsnü Bilir

https://doi.org/10.25295/fsecon.2019.03.008

Abstract

Turkish economy has seen unemployment rates almost above 10% (and 20% for youth) between 2006-2017, although it has grown 5,7% on average in this period. The main reason of this “jobless economic growth” is Turkey’s energy import dependency (which was 77,5% in 2015). So Turkey has to reduce this energy dependency, and renewable energy sources could be an alternative solution at this point. Because Turkey has a huge potential for renewables, especially in solar and wind energy. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the importance of solar and wind energy in terms of employment opportunities for Turkey, given that the number of unemployed persons aged 15 years old and over is about 4 million 468 thousand persons in the period of January 2019 and that the total installed capacities are 3,4 GW and 6,5 GW in these sectors.

Keywords

Jobless economic growth, Renewable energy sources, Solar energy, Wind energy, Employment opportunities

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