CAUSES OF ENERGY POVERTY AND ASSESSMENT OF THE GENERAL SITUATION IN SELECTED CENTRAL ASIAN COUNTRIES

Energy poverty has become one of the most important issues of recent times. It is possible to say that there are many factors that cause energy poverty today. Some of these factors can be listed as inefficient use of energy, high energy production costs due to global problems and the reflection of these cost increases on prices, lack of sufficient energy resources in the country or difficulties in accessing energy resources and individuals not being able to access energy sufficiently due to decreases in real income levels. Evaluating the issue on a country basis can also lead to some mistakes. Because even if a country is considered a developed country, income distribution differences among individuals living in that country can cause energy poverty problems in that country. Energy poverty tends to be a major problem especially in countries where income distribution imbalances are high and the majority of the population has low income levels. Central Asian Turkish Republics have their own energy resources and their geographical locations make the energy of these countries more valuable. Because the Central Asian Turkic Republics are neighbors with China, which has made significant progress towards becoming a superpower, and this geographical proximity to China means a large market where they can sell their energy and therefore a large source of income for the Central Asian Turkic Republics. This study aims to evaluate the energy poverty of selected Central Asian Turkic Republics, which have significant amounts of oil, natural gas and renewable energy resources, in the period 2000-2022. As a result of the examinations, it was determined that as of 2022, energy poverty is an issue in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in terms of having clean fuels and cooking technologies, but energy poverty is not an issue in Turkmenistan, and energy poverty is not an issue in all selected Central Asian Countries in terms of access to electricity.