Determination of Renewable Energy Growth Using Cluster Analysis and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods

Energy plays an important role in both the economic and social development of countries and is a critical factor in human life. The high consumption of fossil fuels in energy production leads to serious environmental problems such as increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that lead to global warming and climate change. Many countries around the world have actively turned to renewable energy or sustainable energy sources in order to cope with the environmental crises caused by climate change. In this study, the renewable energy use performance of OECD countries in terms of sustainable development is evaluated. In the study, 38 countries were divided into three clusters for each year with the 13 variable K-means algorithm for the years 2018–2022. The criteria of the countries in the determined clusters were weighted with the CRITIC (Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation) method for each year during the study period. Countries with weighted criteria were ranked separately for each year within their own clusters using the COPRAS method. With these rankings, it is understood that the biggest share in achieving Türkiye’s “Net Zero 2053” targets among OECD countries is the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.