A review on household energy consumption behavior: how about migrated consumers?

This paper reviews the literature on energy consumption behavior for both domestic and migrated/displaced population and aims to recommend crucial policy measures for creating awareness on the energy efficiency. Consumers’ adoption to the efficient usage of energy varies depending on demographic, behavioral and situational dynamics in their households and societies. The regional or national strategies to implement efficient technologies for the consumer engagement are crucial to change their behaviors. Migrants affect the energy usage patterns in the host country due to their different usage behaviors. Any type of measures for migrated population should include available, acceptable, accessible and affordable energy efficiency applications to engage them with the domestic population

Intra-industry trade with pollution concerned cooperation

The authors develop a two-country, two-firm intra-industry trade model. Each firm is operating at its home country and producing homogeneous goods to be consumed in both countries. Governments apply quantity restriction on pollution. Every individual country is affected from the pollution generated during the production process of its own firm. The model shows that efficiency in pollution abatement technology plays a crucial role on welfare maximizing effort of governments. A critical level of pollution abatement technology determines the preponderance of environmental misgivings in welfare maximizing behavior. The more efficient the firms in pollution abatement technology, the less stricter the governments will be in their policies to reduce negative environmental externalitie

Using alternative instruments in the solid waste management and environmental cleaning tax

Bu çalışmada, uluslararası düzeyde katı atık yönetiminde ne tip ekonomik araç ve/veya araçların kullanıldığı incelenmiş ve Türkiye’de kullanılabilecek en uygun ekonomik araçların belirlenmesi konusunda öneriler geliştirilmiştir. Bu amaçla, öncelikle yurtiçi ve yurtdışındaki mevcut durum incelenerek, halen kullanılan çevre yönetimi araçları belirlenmiştir. Hâlihazırda Türkiye’de uygulanan sistemin etkinliği değerlendirilmiştir. Söz konusu araştırmalar sırasında geçerli mevzuatın ve yönetim sisteminin durumu göz önünde bulundurulmuştur. Türkiye’deki önemli çevre sorunlarından biri katı atıkların yönetiminde yaşanan eksikliklerdir. Katı atıklar konusunda Türkiye’de halen uygulanan Çevre Temizlik Vergisi (ÇTV) hem katı atıkların uzaklaştırma maliyetini karşılamamakta hem de atık miktarının azaltılması konusunda bir teşvik sağlamamaktadır. Bunun nedeni verginin, katı atık emisyon miktarı ile atık bertarafının marjinal maliyeti arasında teşvik edici bir ilişkinin olmadığı bir biçimde düzenlenmesidir. Mükellefleri daha az atık üretmeye zorlayacak veya teşvik edecek herhangi bir mali mekanizma yoktur. ÇTV tahsilatı tüketilen su miktarı (m3) başına yapılmaktadır ve bu da üretilen katı atık miktarıyla ilişkilendirilmediğinden hem atık bertaraf maliyetini karşılamamakta hem de çevre sorunlarını arttırmaktadır. Katı atıklarla ilgili mevcut ve olası sorunların çözümünde ÇTV ile finansman olanakları ve yapılabilirliği irdelenmiş, dışsallıkların da göz önünde bulundurulduğu vergilendirme sistemlerinin uygulanması durumunda elde edilecek avantaj ve dezavantajlar ortaya konulmuştur. Sonuç olarak ÇTV’nin zaman içinde kaldırılarak, üretilen atık bedeline göre ücret alınmasına yönelik bir sistemin oluşturulmasının uygun olacağı düşünülmektedir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Katı atık yönetimi, ekonomik araçlar, çevre vergileri, Çevre Temizlik Vergisi, dışsallık.In this study, a proposal was developed on the use of most appropriate economic instruments by solving conceptual problems emerging on the definition and use of main economic instruments for environmental management and was applied on solid waste management particularly. To this end; first of all, all available environmental management tools were determined while present situation had been investigated in national and international scale. Effectiveness of the current system in Turkey was evaluated. Legislation and management system in use were taken into consideration during aforementioned study. Economic instrument can be described as any instrument that aims to induce a change in behavior of economic agents by internalizing environmental or depletion cost through a change in the incentive structure that these agents face rather than mandating a standard or a technology. Generally accepted classification of economic instruments is made by OECD. According to this classification main economic instruments for environmental management can be classified as user fees, emission charges, product taxes, non-compliance fees, tradable permits, deposit refund systems, performance bonds, voluntary agreements and environmental subsidies. User fees, emission charges, product taxes, deposit refund systems, voluntary agreements and environmental subsidies are frequently used ones in solid waste management. They can be used individually or together to reach an efficient solid waste management system. There is some misusage of economic instruments both in definition and in practical use. Economic instruments can be used for revenue raising purposes or earmarked for environmental quality goals. Taxes and tax-like charges are the powerful tools in solid waste management if they are applied correctly. However, price elasticity of solid waste collection and disposal are found as inelastic by some researchers. This fact causes that taxes are not too successful to decrease the solid waste amount produced by individuals. Despite environmental cleaning tax is named as tax; it is a user charge according to OECD classification. One of the most important environmental problems in Turkey is the lack of appropriate solid waste management system. In solid waste management, besides a number of Ministries and institutions, more than 3000 municipalities are responsible and authorized in Turkey. Except for municipalities, number of directly responsible institutions and authorities is 36. Legislation is also very scattered. Direct and indirect law and regulations about environment are above one hundred in number. This structure is also an important obstacle and hampering the effectiveness of successful application of economic instruments and achieving the environmental quality goals. Municipalities allocate a significant portion of their budgets for solid waste management. Environmental Cleaning Tax (ECT), stipulated by the Municipal Revenues Law has been using since 1993 in Turkey to compensation of waste management financing in municipalities. However it is able to compensate only less than 30 percent of waste management costs. ECT is collected per m3 consumed water per household. It is not designed for environmental protection purpose. It is designed such as there is no relationship between solid waste emission and external marginal cost of solid waste disposal in a stimulating manner. Taxpayers have no incentive and/or enforcement for producing less solid waste. Externality can be defined as the impact of costs and benefits generated from economic activity on the people not related to this activity. In market economy, it is generally explained that the occurrence of externality caused by the activities of one person or company on other person or company beside of market prices. Environmental externalities are related to external costs that are described as the misuse of environmental resources in a harmful way to others without any financial indemnification. All alternative strategies about solid waste management cause some environmental externalities during collection, transfer and final disposal of solid wastes to some extent. These externalities create a number of local, regional and global problems. Human health effects, disturbance of ecosystem, depletion of resources and global warming can be sorted among them. Disamenities are also important problem for human welfare. When these externalities are not internalized by using some instruments, there will not be reached sustainable development goals. Therefore, it is believed that adoption of new economic instruments is necessary for municipal solid waste management by considering externalities and giving up the use of ECT in the future will be useful for sustainable solid waste management.  Keywords: Solid waste management, economic instruments, environmental taxes, externalities

Day-ahead power market behavior for a small supplier: case of Turkish market

The day-ahead power market has become more complex with the allowance of block purchases from private sales companies. Resource handling has become the prominent problem for both energy suppliers and energy distributers. Complexity of the problem forces the approach by each role player in the market. This research handles the market position of a small hydropower plant owner who has negligible effect on market price construction in a complex competition environment. Based on an optimum schedule of three days, this model proposes policies for the power generator to maximize its profits. An MILP model, which uses the day-ahead market price forecasts from a hybrid SARIMA-ANN price forecasting model, is designed to optimize the day-ahead generation schedule. The case application in Turkish power market shows the increase of profit with a reliable generation schedule

The role of foreign direct investment and trade on carbon emissions in Turkey

This study aims to observe the long run and short run effects of gross domestic product, foreign direct investment inflows and trade on CO2 emissions and causality relationships between these factors, using annual data for the period of 1974-2010. The empirical results demonstrate that the inverted U-shaped relationship of environmental Kuznets curve is valid for Turkey. In addition, there are positive long run effects of foreign direct investment and trade openness on CO2 emissions. The authors also find a bidirectional causality relationship between CO2 emission and FDI