Because of severe environmental impacts associated with the use of conventional energy sources, most of the countries attempt to decarbonize their energy sector by increasing share of renewable energy in their total energy consumption which also reduces their energy import dependency. Therefore, this study aims to understand the determinants of renewable energy consumption for 58 countries over the period from 1990 to 2012. The period and number of countries are determined based on the data availability for all the variables. For example, data on total greenhouse gas emissions is available only up to 2012. Analysis is based on a panel threshold regression model to find out asymmetric behavior of renewable energy consumption. The model explains renewable energy consumption by various economic factors in a nonlinear framework. Different effects of these factors are expected under different economic regimes characterized by income level. Results show that for real GDP per capita lower than 1527.977 US$, signs, statistical significance and magnitude of coefficients on some variables differ tremendously compared to the upper regime verifying the asymmetric relationship. Therefore, one can conclude that determinants of renewable energy consumption differ across countries and time based on the real GDP per capita level.

electricity sectors have experienced a transformation towards more liberalized and decentralized structure since the 1980s. this transformation process increases the importance of regional-level analysis. this study analyses the factors affecting regional electricity demand. as a case study, analysis is performed for turkey by employing a dynamic spatial lag panel data model. the model allows for the inclusion of spatial interaction effects into the analysis which are important but mostly ignored in the literature. Findings show evidence of spatial spillover effects. therefore, the paper concludes that one should consider spatial spillover effects of economic factors and regional energy policies.

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The issue of convergence has been discussed in many theoretical and empirical studies. Because per capita electricity consumption is considered as an indication of economic development, this study aims to determine the presence of "absolute and conditional beta (β) convergence" of per capita total electricity consumption across the provinces of Turkey between 1986 and 2013. This work is the first investigation of electricity consumption convergence in Turkey. Based on the annual balanced panel data and the spatial panel data model, our findings indicate absolute β convergence of per capita electricity consumption across the provinces of Turkey. We conclude that regional policies are successful in reducing regional disparities in per capita electricity consumption among the provinces of Turkey. However, other indicators of economic development should be examined to determine the overall convergence.