Assessment of Renewable Energy Policy Actors Within the Framework of Public Choice Theory

It is considered that renewable energy might be able to create a range of solutions for sustainable development, reducing carbon emissions and therefore preventing climate change, providing energy security, and avoiding price fluctuations in the energy sector. For these counting reasons, renewable energy has had an ascending trend for the last 20 years and has become a significant policy agenda at national, international, and supranational institutions around the world. According to their administrative capacities, many of the countries made efforts to create policies more or less in order to orient to renewable energy production. In this context, several goals are set to reduce carbon emissions, and green energy and green transformation are commenced to encourage. Notwithstanding these policy priorities and investments, the portion of renewable energy in world total energy production has limited progress. Besides the institutional, technological, economic, and geographical possibilities, developments and tendencies around the world have an influence on this progress positively or negatively. In this study, the impact of public choices on renewable energy policies is explained through actor behaviors who are seeking to maximize their interests in public choice theory and its effect on renewable energy production is evaluated. Consequently, despite actor behaviors who are acting for their self-motives during the decision-making process, the anticipated growth rate for renewable energy cannot be reached.