Environmental and Economic Impacts of Wave Energy: Some Public Policy Recommendations for Implementation in Turkey

The Rising Trend Of Renewable Energy Resources: Wave Energy

Climate change is one of the great challenges of the 21st century. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) define climate change as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods”. It is obvious that “a low-carbon energy revolution” (IEA, 2009, p. 45) is required in an effort to achieve climate change mitigation. Increased gas emissions accelerated after the Second World War has started to change the Earth’s climate. The environment has been exposed to negative impacts due to exploiting of industrialized countries’ insatiably and welfare increase and use of the resources has increased among developed and developing countries (Chichilnisky, 1997, p. 467).

World energy consumption has been rapidly increasing and it is estimated to rise considerably over the next decades. It is known that fossil fuel resources have a fundamental role in meeting rising energy demands across the globe. It is further known that fossil fuels are shown to be contributing to the global climate change so virulently. Global climate change and energy security concerns constitute two central issues in today’s world energy policies.

The International Energy Agency define renewable energy as “the energy derived from natural processes that are replenished at a faster rate than they are consumed” and clarifies geothermal, hydropower, bioenergy, solar photovoltaic, solar power and wind and marine (tide and wave) energy as renewable (IEA, 2015, p. 2). However solar, wind and wave energy and other renewable energy sources are replenished and not exhausted. As they constantly renew themselves, destocking cannot happen.