Analysis of Innovation and Energy Profiles in the Turkish Manufacturing Sector

We present Turkey’s manufacturing-sector innovation data and, for the first time, analyze likely relationships among GDP growth, sectoral innovation intensities, energy consumptions, and energy-saving potentials. We detect a power-law-like relationship between the projected energy-saving potentials and realized energy consumptions of the manufacturing-sector groups. We observe that the energy consumptions of the sectors do not change significantly despite varying innovation levels during transitions from economic crisis and recovery periods. We conclude that the Turkey’s manufacturing sectors’ energy consumptions are insensitive to their innovation levels, or their innovation activities are not energy-efficiency and energy-saving-oriented, reflecting Turkey’s past supply-oriented energy policy. The leader innovating sectors are, nevertheless, expected to contribute more to Turkey’s energy-saving and energy-efficiency policies if their innovation potentials can be directed to achieve higher energy savings and energy efficiencies via government incentives within the agenda of the recent energy-efficiency and R&D laws