Energy is an important issue for achieving sustainable development. Sustainable Development Goals emphasize renewable energy sources, green energy technologies, and energy efficiency for sustainable world. In addition, energy consumption patterns can influence energy efficiency as much as green energy policies. In this point, sustainable consumption patterns should be adapted into energy consumption. 3R principle can be an alternative model for sustainable energy consumption. This study aims to explore how household can adapt 3R principle in energy consumption patterns in Turkey. Turkey aims to achieve sustainable development goals and especially works to achieve energy security and efficiency in the long term. In this point, the contribution of households will play a critical role for energy efficiency and security in a country. The study analyzed open access data from TURKSTAT (Turkish Statistical Institute) to determine the framework of household energy consumption patterns.
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Energy plays a key role in achieving sustainable development goals in the long term. Affordable, accessible and sustainable energy provides higher life-standards for all people (citizens) in the world. Energy supports well-being of people and improves usual life-standards through meeting basic needs such as illumination, heating, hot meal etc. Today’s living conditions makes people almost energy-addicted because people don’t want leave modern conveniences such as electronics, small home appliances and smart phones etc. On the other hand, there are still many countries or people who suffer from lack of energy access (Yıldırım and Yıldırım, 2019). Sustainable development aims to get balance between economic, social and environmental issues (Munasinghe, 2002) globally that energy sources should be accessible, affordable and sustainable for the future. Recently, the critical value of energy issues is accepted more important to achieve sustainable development (Johnston, 2001; Ahuja and Tatsutani, 2009; Minelli, 2017; Owusu and Asumadu-Sarkodie, 2016; Yoshida and Zusman, 2015; Yıldırım et.al., 2019). In 2015, the United Nations set 2030 Sustainable Development Goals which included 17 main targets to be achieved by 2030 (LEAD, 2016). Energy issues were included in 2030 SDGs as a separate theme. In Millennium Development Goals, energy issues or themes weren’t included directly. MDGs had 8 main goals to be achieved by 2015 (Easterly, 2008). These 8 goals were categorized as “reducing poverty and hunger, achieving equal primary education, gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving health, fighting against diseases (HIV/AIDS, malaria etc.), achieving environmental sustainability and developing global partnerships” (WHO, 2015). 2030 SDGs have more expanded and detailed goals. Table 1 summarizes the general framework of 2030 SDGs as below.