The impact of the US interest rate and oil prices on renewable energy in Turkey: a bootstrap ARDL approach

Abstract

This research investigates the spillover effect of the US interest rate and oil prices on renewable energy utilization in Turkey. By employing a novel bootstrap autoregressive distributed lag approach on annual data from 1985 to 2016, the empirical findings and discussions represent the first contribution to the energy economics literature. The findings of this research confirm that the US interest rate has a significant spillover effect on the use of renewable energy in Turkey through the channels of income and local interest rate. Due to limited foreign exchange reserves, high foreign debt, low international reserves, and devaluation of the local currency, the Turkish economy is highly intertwined with the US economy through international investment and trade. All these factors reinforce the spillover influence of the US interest rate on energy consumption in Turkey. Moreover, this study affirms that the price of oil has a negative impact on renewable energy use through the real income channel. In order for Turkey to realize its investments in renewable energy resources more reliably and sustainably, the study suggests that policymakers should revise the current economic growth model by making it more resilient to external shocks such as the US interest rate, exchange rate, and oil prices.