A plethora of studies have shown that structural change helps nations achieve socioeconomic growth. The influence of structural change on environmental quality, on the other hand, has yet to be thoroughly investigated. As a result, the current study assesses the asymmetric impact of structural change on CO2 emissions while controlling for the effects of economic progress, renewable energy utilization, and nonrenewable energy in Turkey. To this end, this research used yearly data stretching from 1965 to 2019. The study applied several econometric approaches including nonlinear auto-regressive distributed lag (NARDL) and spectral causality to assess these associations. The outcomes from the NARDL reveal that variations in the regressors have a nonlinear influence on CO2 in Turkey. Moreover, the transition in the economy's structure helps to boost ecological quality, while the findings also show that Turkey's current economic progress trajectory is unsustainable due to the country's reliance on fossil fuel-based energy consumption. The outcomes of the spectral causality test also show that structural change can predict CO2 emissions in Turkey at different frequencies. Based on the study findings, the government should encourage investment in the service sector in order to maintain a suitable level of environmental sustainability.
Keywords: Carbon emissions; Economic growth; Renewable energy; Structural change; Turkey.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021.