Energy Policy Research Center (EPAM)

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Open Access
Beyond scarcity: rethinking water, climate change and conflict in the Sudans
(Elsevier, 2014) Selby, J.; Hoffmann, Clemens
This article develops a new framework for understanding environment-conflict relations, on both theoretical grounds and through a qualitative historical analysis of the links between water and conflict in the states of Sudan and South Sudan. Theoretically, the article critiques the dominant emphases on ‘scarcity’, ‘state failure’ and ‘under-development’ within discussions of environmental security, and proposes an alternative model of environment-conflict relations centring on resource abundance and globally-embedded processes of state-building and development. Empirically, it examines three claimed (or possible) linkages between water and conflict in the Sudans: over trans-boundary waters of the Nile; over the links between internal resource scarcities and civil conflict; and over the internal conflict impacts of water abundance and development. We find that there exists only limited evidence in support of the first two of these linkages, but plentiful evidence that water abundance, and state-directed processes of economic development and internal colonisation relating to water, have had violent consequences. We conclude that analysts and policymakers should pay more attention to the impacts of resource abundance, militarised state power and global political economic forces in their assessments of the potential conflict impacts of environmental and especially climate change.
Open Access
The challenges facing Eastern Mediterranean gas and how international law can help overcome them
(Taylor and Francis, 2021) Stanič, A.; Karbuz, Sohbet
Enormous natural gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean have attracted the attention of the international energy majors. The region, however, remains one of the most under-explored and -exploited regions in the world. Numerous technical, commercial, legal and political challenges need to be overcome for these resources to be exploited and exported. This article examines the key commercial and legal challenges the region faces, and proposes possible ways to overcome these challenges by discussing the international law on the delimitation of maritime boundaries and the customary international law obligations of states in the region to resolve delimitation disputes peacefully, to make every effort to enter into provisional arrangements of a practical nature pending agreement on final delimitation and to refrain from unilaterally exploiting natural resources in disputed maritime zones
Open Access
Energy and environmental policy against climate change in Turkey
(Academic Press, 2018) Acar, S.; Voyvoda, E.; Yeldan, Alp Erinç
Based on the structure of the economy in general but especially focusing on the duality patterns laid out in Chapter 2, this chapter first examines the recent energy and environment statistics in Turkey, and second, evaluates the existing (energy and environmental) policy framework and future potential of these policies in terms of their implications for climate change. We argue that the lack of mitigation at the aggregate national level finds its manifestation in the widening gap across regional GHG emissions as a consequence of the dual economic structure and the lack of differential policies across the regions.
Open Access
Energy discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean: conflict or cooperation?
(Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2014) Grigoriadis, Ioannis N.
The discovery of oil and naturalgas reserves in the Middle East at the beginning of the twentieth century changed the fate of the region. From a backwater of international politics, the Middle East became central to international strategic rivalries. Almost a century later, energy discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean are unlikely to bring about such tectonic shifts in the strategic fortunes of the Levant. Yet they have generated a fresh interest in their potential impact on existing regional disputes and power constellations. The recent discovery of sizable quantities of natural gas in the seabed between Israel and Cyprus has added to the complexity of international politics in the region. Cyprus and Israel are expected to be the first two states to benefit, as they have already signed large contracts for exploration and drilling projects that would soon turn them into net energy exporters. The possibility of discovering further energy reserves has revived the question of delineating the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of all littoral states in the Eastern Mediterranean and added one potential regional dispute. Turkey’s role has been important, not only because it is one of the region’s littoral states and a large energy importer, but also because it could serve as a transport hub for the delivery of extracted hydrocarbons to the world market. Nevertheless, the Cyprus question, disputes over the delineation of the EEZ and Turkey’s frozen relations with Israel have deterred regional cooperation, despite the positive effect that it could have, not least for European energy security.
Open Access
Energy, security, and foreign policy
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) Özdamar, Özgür; Denemark, R. A.; Marlin-Bennett, R.
Next to national defense, energy security has become a primary issue for the survival and wellbeing of both developed and developing nations. A review of the literature shows how concerns for energy security acquired a new dimension after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when the Western powers and a weakened Russia competed for the control of the Eurasia region and its energy resources. Research has also focused on how different countries have developed a variety of strategies for securing their energy supply. Energy security literature can be split into three general sections: neoclassical economics and public choice, bureaucratic politics and public administration, and political economy. Scholars have also explored regime theory, resource conflict, and the relationship between national energy security and foreign policy. In the case of the United States, four major challenges in foreign policy issues related to energy security can be identified: “building alliances, strengthening collective energy security, asserting its interests with energy suppliers, and addressing the rise of state control in energy.” These challenges require eight specific foreign policy responses from the U.S. government, two of which constitute the core relationship between energy security and foreign policy making: “candor and respect” for the producer countries, and foreign policies that promote the stability and security of suppliers.
Open Access
Environmental impacts of coal subsidies in Turkey: a general equilibrium analysis
(Elsevier, 2016) Acar, S.; Yeldan, Alp Erinç
In this study we aim at providing an analytical framework for Turkey to study the macroeconomics and environmental impacts of the existing coal subsidization scheme. To this end we develop a regionally differentiated applied general equilibrium model spanning over 2015-2030. Our analytical apparatus focuses exclusively on the fiscal implications as well as the environmental repercussions of the removal of the subsidies on greenhouse gas emissions. With the aid of a set of alternative policy scenarios against a "business as usual" path, we study the regional and sectorial performances of growth, employment, investment and capital accumulation, consumption/welfare and trade balance. Our results indicate that by simple elimination of the coal subsidization scheme, Turkey can reduce its aggregate gaseous emissions by as much as 5% without a significant loss in its GDP.
Open Access
How to go green: a general equilibrium investigation of environmental policies for sustained growth with an application to Turkey’s economy
(Springer, 2015) Bouzaher, A.; Şahin, S.; Yeldan, Alp Erinç
Green growth is a relatively new concept aimed at focusing attention on achieving sustainable development through the efficient use of environmental assets without slowing economic growth. This paper presents a real-world application of the concept, and identifies viable policy options for achieving a complementary environmental regulatory framework that minimizes output and employment losses. The analysis utilizes macro level data from the Turkish economy, and develops an applied general equilibrium model to assess the impact of a selected number of green policy instruments and public policy intervention mechanisms, including market-based incentives designed to accelerate technology adoption and achieve higher employment and sustainable growth patterns. Overall, our results indicate that an integrated employment and urban greening policy strategy that combines a green jobs programme with a set of earmarked tax-cum-innovation policies towards R&D-driven growth, mainly targeted to strategic industrial sectors and agriculture, developing market economies can achieve significant reductions in gaseous emissions and urban waste while maintaining significant gains in productivity and employment.
Open Access
Introduction
(Academic Press, 2018) Acar, S.; Voyvoda, E.; Yeldan, Alp Erinç
This chapter serves as an introduction to the main research questions, background, and objectives of the study. It describes the context (i.e., conceptualization of duality) and the modeling tools for decarbonized sustainable growth pathways as a way of pursuing a regionally-equitable development strategy.
Open Access
Key challenges facing the Eastern Mediterranean: the future of regional energy development
(Siyaset Ekonomi ve Toplum Arastirmalari Vakfi, 2021) Karbuz, Sohbet
This article provides a critical overview of the key commercial, technical, legal, and political challenges the Eastern Mediterranean region faces in regard to the development of its natural gas resources and proposes possible ways to overcome them. To that aim, it first gives an up-to-date overview of the upstream developments in the region. It then discusses the challenges facing the monetization of the gas discoveries by looking at both the commercial challenges hampering exploration and field development and the technical challenges involved in exporting the gas to the immediate and distant markets. While examining the legal and political challenges related to maritime delimitation and political alignments, it highlights the role of gas. Finally, it offers some possible ways to overcome those challenges.
Open Access
Low carbon development pathways and priorities for Turkey
(Sabancı University İstanbul Policy Center, 2015) Voyvoda, E.; Yeldan, Alp Erinç
Scientists and decision makers agree that climate change is the biggest problem ever faced by humankind. Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including 195 contracting states and the European Union, will meet in Paris in December 2015 and negotiate the new climate agreement that is expected to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2020. Prior to the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP21) in Paris, the United Nations called on each state to specify its future contributions to the efforts to keep the global average temperature rise below 2°C and to safeguard ecosystems and communities from the devastating impacts of climate change. Countries are expected to determine their contributions on the basis of their historical responsibilities in the GHG emissions growth and their current capacities. This analysis brings up three critical questions that Turkey should seek answers to, as it attempts to determine its national contribution to climate change mitigation: -What could Turkey’s responsibility and its emission reduction target be within the scope of the 2°C target? -What kind of a policy package could be implemented in order to achieve the required emission reduction? - What could be the impact of these policies on macroeconomic indicators? What are the costs of implementing and not implementing these policies? In order to avoid the devastating impacts of climate change, global carbon emissions should not exceed 2,900 GtCO2. This is referred to as the carbon budget. 65% of this budget (that is, 1,900 GtCO2) had been used up as of 2011. Should the current upward trend in emissions continue, the remaining 1,000 GtCO2 will have been emitted before 2050. To stay within the 2°C target, global carbon neutrality will need to be achieved sometime between 2055 and 2070, and total global greenhouse gas emissions need to shrink to net zero some time between 2080 and 2100. This study identified Turkey’s share in the remaining carbon budget based on “minimum historical responsibility” and “maximum development needs”. In this respect, in order to fulfil its responsibility within the scope of the 2°C target, Turkey should reduce its cumulative carbon emissions by 2,980 MtCO2 until 2030 relative to the reference scenario.
Open Access
Modeling for green growth: environmental policy in a dualistic peripheral economy
(Academic Press, 2018) Acar, S.; Voyvoda, E.; Yeldan, Alp Erinç
The chapter introduces the main components of the applied general equilibrium model to represent the dual structure of Turkey. It discusses the distinguishing features and its contribution to the modeling literature with its unique emphasis on duality, regionalization and social relevance. It further conceptualizes a Social Accounting Matrix for the Regionally Fragmented Dual Economy to accommodate Turkish macro-level data. Given the theoretical structure of the CGE model, the main data sources of the modeling paradigm are introduced and tabulated within the discipline of Walrasian general equilibrium. The unique contribution of the chapter is its accommodation of regional differentiation and of dualistic labor markets and preparation for the database in social accounting matrix format. This chapter purports to extend the traditional neoclassical (Walrasian) growth modeling based on one-sector depictions of the aggregate economy with a balanced growth path notion towards the steady state, and as such, we aim to contribute to the empirics of the traditional growth paradigm via questioning the long run equilibrium path way towards a balanced steady state.
Open Access
The Nabucco Project: implications for the EU strategic energy review
(Notre Europe, 2010) Grigoriadis, Ioannis N.; Fabry, E.; Ricard-Nihoul, G.
Energy is a key issue of this year’s European political agenda. Article 194 (1) of the Lisbon Treaty states that the Union energy policy will aim – amongst others things – to “ensure the functioning of the energy market,” “ensure security of energy supply in the Union” and “promote the interconnection of energy networks”. Article 194 (2) declares that the European Parliament and the Council will “establish the measures necessary to achieve the objectives in paragraph 1”. The development of a Southern Gas Corridor has also been declared in the 2nd EU Strategic Energy Review to be essential to EU energy needs. Energy projects in South- Eastern Europe, the Caspian and the Middle East, which used to be hampered by regional conflicts, are now facing the additional challenge of the global economic crisis. The signature of the Intergovernmental Accord for the Nabucco project was a positive step and a success of the last European Trio Presidency, yet much remains to be done. A strong European energy strategy would not only limit the scope for individual member state energy strategies and provide a clear example of European solidarity towards smaller member states and the rest of the world; it would also increase the probability that crucial projects such as the Nabucco are realised. Such a success would increase EU legitimacy in foreign policy-making, which is all the more useful as the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty come into force.
Open Access
A new era in Russian gas market: the diminishing role of Gazprom
(Elsevier, 2015) Özdemir, Volkan; Karbuz, S.
The Russian gas industry is in a transition, which can be characterized as modest decentralization. While its gas production continues to decline and competition on the Russian market intensifies, Gazprom will have to adapt to changing conditions. Non-Gazprom producers are increasing their share in total gas production. Major structural reforms may make the market structure in gas and oil sectors more and more similar in the longer term. Although liberalization is partly achieved for LNG exports, the pressure is now building on breaking Gazprom's pipeline gas monopoly. On the other hand, Gazprom is currently facing several challenges on the European market. Gazprom might unbundle transmission sector along with others. All these will, sooner or later, prepare the demise of Gazprom monopoly.
Open Access
Oil and intra-state conflict in Iraq and Syria: sub-state actors and challenges for Turkey’s energy security
(Routledge, 2017) İpek, Pınar
The continuing dependency on fossil fuels of the Middle East not only in Turkey's energy mix but also in world energy demand requires further analysis of oil and conflict in the region since the fall of Mosul in Iraq to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in June 2014. This article addresses the relationship between oil and conflict. Then, it examines the case of Turkey's increasing energy relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government to elucidate the implications of inter-state and intra-state conflict on regional interdependence in the region. The argument asserts that risks of an abrupt regime change or revolutionary regime formation in the aftermath of civil war in Syria and ethnic or sectarian violence in Iraq, which are highly associated with intra-state conflicts, present challenges for Turkey's energy security and most importantly for human security in the region.
Open Access
Patterns of growth in dual economies: challenges of development in the 21st century
(Academic Press, 2018) Acar, S.; Voyvoda, E.; Yeldan, Alp Erinç
This chapter attempts to examine patterns of growth in dual economies within the context of challenges of development for the 21st century. To this end, we first study the broad contours of growth and adjustments in the global economy, before, during, and after the 2008–09 global crisis. Here four general patterns emerge, namely, stagnation of wage incomes; declining investment effort; consequent decline in the rates of growth of productivity; and a compensatory rise in corporate and household indebtedness. The chapter continues with a deeper investigation of the structural sources of deindustrialization and widening duality in both labor markets and technological diffusion. Finally, we link all these ideas with the macroeconomics of global climate change and implications on the feedback effects of the economy-resource use-environmental degradation nexus.
Open Access
Policy analysis: toward a green development pathway for the peripheral world
(Academic Press, 2018) Acar, S.; Voyvoda, E.; Yeldan, Alp Erinç
This chapter uses the analytical model described in Chapter 4 to quantitatively investigate the set of viable macroeconomic policy instruments for combating climate change, and addresses a set of duality characteristics of the Turkish economy. The chapter initially characterizes the business-as-usual pathway over the first half of the 21st century (until 2040), and then studies a strategic policy scenario to attain multiple objectives of reduced informalization, more equitable regional social welfare, and environmental abatement. The results indicate that by pursuing a coherent macroeconomic strategy toward taxing fossil fuel use and earmarking fiscal revenues for expansion of the renewables sector strategically located within a regional development program, Turkey can mitigate gaseous emissions and expand its income and employment within a more equitable and sustained development pathway.
Open Access
Rethinking climate change, conflict and security
(Taylor&Francis, 2014) Selby, J.; Hoffmann, Clemens
This special issue of Geopolitics presents a series of critical interventions on the links between global anthropogenic climate change, conflict and security. In this introduction, we situate the special issue by providing an assessment of the state of debate on climate security, and then by summarising the eight articles that follow. We observe, to start with, that contemporary climate security discourse is dominated by a problematic ensemble of policy-led framings and assumptions. And we submit that the contributions to this issue help rethink this dominant discourse in two distinct ways, offering both a series of powerful critiques, plus new interpretations of climate-conflict linkages which extend beyond Malthusian orthodoxy.
Open Access
The role of energy security in Turkish foreign policy (2004–2016)
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) İpek, Pınar; Ercan, P. G.
Energy security is a growing concern not only for Turkey but also for many energy-import-dependent countries. This chapter examines how the role of energy security in Turkish foreign policy is constituted by material interests and ideational forces since March 2004. The chapter is divided into three sections. The section ‘Turkey’s energy security and its asymmetric interdependence with gas suppliers’ defines energy-import-dependency of Turkey and reviews the priorities in building pipeline projects since the start of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, while the section ‘Regional economic interdependence and Turkey’s energy security: ideational forces and material interests’ presents the material interests and ideational forces that constituted the role of energy security in Turkish foreign policy. Finally, the section ‘Shared material interests in booming exports to energy-rich neighbours’ concludes with the examination of the case study to identify challenges and opportunities in enhancing the role of energy security in Turkish foreign policy.
Open Access
State and substate oil trade: the Turkey‐KRG Deal
(Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2016) Özdemir, Volkan; Raszewski, S.
After the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, there has been increasing tension between the central government in Baghdad and the Erbil‐based Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern part of the country. Although KRG President Masoud Barzani supported Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al‐Maliki in the federal elections of 2010, the two sides have been in open conflict over energy projects within the semiautonomous Kurdish region. The KRG is a substate actor in regional relations whose international legal status has not yet been determined. It is important to note that any future determination will undoubtedly hinge on oil and gas resources. Maliki's administration has consistently argued that the Federal Oil Ministry has primary authority over Iraq's oil sector. The KRG has claimed independent authority over energy resources in the region, including the right to sign oil‐field exploration and production contracts within its territory, govern oil fields, and export oil and natural gas. The federal constitution of Iraq regulates the oil revenue‐sharing mechanism and other features related to energy exploration and production. Following from this, all petroleum exported from Iraq should be marketed through the country's State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), with the KRG receiving 17 percent of the resulting revenues. However, the regulation of the energy sector in the KRG is unclear.
Open Access
The Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) as a unique project in the Eurasian gas network: a comparative analysis
(Pergamon Press, 2015) Özdemir, Volkan; Yavuz, H. B.; Tokgöz, E.
Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP) as a part of the Southern Gas Corridor has significant implications for the transit security of the European Union and the domestic gas market of Turkey. Among those countries in Eurasia, only Turkey's process of liberalization is a success story, albeit an incomplete one. Surrounded by liberal markets to the West and monopolistic markets to the East, Turkey partially possesses a competitive gas market. TANAP, a unique project among the international pipelines in Eurasia, strengthens Turkey's peculiar position by de facto ending the monopoly of the incumbent BOTAŞ over gas transmission and thus contributes to the liberalization of the domestic market.