Charting Sustainable Future on Energy Security, Financial Development, Natural Resources and Economic Output for Turkey

Abstract

The achievement of 16 out of the 123 sustainable development goals (SDGs) indicates the vast task ahead for Turkey. Addressing the aspects of ecological sustainability via the trend of the ratio of biocapacity to ecological footprint, this study seeks to examine whether energy security, financial development, natural resources and economic expansion drive Turkey's load capacity factor. By implementing quantile-on-quantile and its Granger causality dimension, the results largely affirm the statistically significant effect of energy security on the load capacity factor in all quantiles. Although this impact is weak, it is significantly positive, thus indicating that the country's energy security profile is advancing its ecological sustainability. Similarly, globalization positively impacts the load capacity factor by a strong dimension. Conversely, financial development and economic growth exert a significant but negative effect on the load capacity factor in most quantiles, which reflects the undesirability of these indicators on the country's environmental sustainability drive. Specifically, the negative effects of financial development and economic output on the load capacity factor are mainly in the middle to higher quantiles (0.4–0.95) and lowest quantiles (0.05–0.3), respectively. The results of this study can guide the development of intuitive and robust energy efficiency and energy security-related policies.