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Abstract
Italian policies in the field of sustainable energy transition have supported mainly the deployment of large-sized renewable energy plants. At the same time the transition was fostered also through small or medium plants and in rural and mountain areas. In this paper we present the case study of Sasso di Castalda, a little mountain municipality located in the Basilicata region (Southern Italy), one of the poorest and the most sparsely populated areas of Italy. The main theoretical assumption is that the sustainable energy policies designed by National (or supra-National) institutions are translated in practice at the local level through “performative connections”. The sociology of translation (Callon) is adopted to investigate how ecological modernization is fostered in the energy field at the local level in disadvantaged contexts. This research focuses on the connections which shaped the sustainable transition in the community, considering environmental governance and regulations as well as local social practices. What the research shows is the relevance of the performative relations enacted in a multilevel and heterogeneous network. Indeed, within this pattern diversified skills were activated, along with specific technological and organizational configurations.
Notes
† This paper is an updated version of a research published in the Italian journal Quaderni di Sociologia, LVIII (66): 137–147.
1. Source: EurObserv'ER, The State of Renewable Energy in Europe. 2015 Edition, 15th report, Paris and the Eurostat statistics (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database, accessed June 15, 2015).
2. Data: Terna SpA (the national electricity transmission system operator, www.terna.it), Statistical Data on Electricity in Italy 2014, Rome; GSE SpA (the State-owned company which promotes green energy, www.gse.it), Energia da fonti rinnovabili. Anno 2014, Roma.
3. Source: Nimby Forum (www.nimbyforum.it, accessed February 1, 2015) a research project on the territorial disputes against infrastructures handled by Aris, a non-profit association. Its annual reports are sponsored by the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers and several Ministries.
4. Callon (Citation1986) formalized the translation process in four main stages. Formulated in a very concise way, this process unfolds as follows: problematisation (when a specific issue is argued in terms of problem and solution by an individual or collective actor), interessement (when the problem/solution argument is shared with other actors/allies), enrollment (when the plural and collective agency of allies is negotiated and framed) and mobilization (that implies the enactment in practice of the solution through a constant maintenance of the connection between different interests).
5. “The aim is to denaturalize these phenomena by viewing them as continually made and remade as opposed to existing ‘out there’ with inherent properties and characteristics. Despite this avowed anti-essentialism, ANT in fact continues to rely upon the notion of inherent agential capacities when attributing properties to natural and material objects. […] To be clear, emphasizing the social construction of the material world is not to slip into an ‘idealist’ position that denies the existence of reality beyond our ideas about it” (Whittle and Spicer Citation2008, 613–614).
6. Performativity works also thought that this article participates in shaping the object of observation: “Academic work is performative. It is always an intervention. It’s just that often the intervention may be invisible, denied or unacknowledged. And, the difference made will always be unknowable in its entirety” (Law and Singleton Citation2013, 486).
7. The focal actor is one of the most relevant elements Callon (Citation1986) recall when illustrating how a translation process works. The focal actor is not an essential actor in itself, but he became focal in a specific time and space, when and where its interests and actions are performed and performs synergy with other humans and non-humans. This synergy enacts a temporary bond that connects heterogeneity, in Callon words an “obligatory passage point” (OPP) that needs to be constantly maintained and negotiated.
8. Founded in 1980, Legambiente is one of the bigger Italian environmentalist associations. Since 2004 Legambiente publishes an annual report on the diffusion of renewables in Italy and related local best practices.
9. Brienza (4200 inhabitants) and Satriano di Lucania (2400 people) are two mountain municipalities close to Sasso di Castalda which are in a different situation. These two towns do not have a municipal energy strategy. Moreover in the first case a wind farm of 18.5 MW was installed, while in the second case 28 solar parks exceeding 400 kW were grid-connected. The regional environmental association OLA reports in its website (www.olambientalista.it, accessed December 1, 2014) the local oppositions against these green facilities.
10. The EU target by 2020 for Italy is 17% of renewable energy in the final gross energy consumption and CO2 cut by 15% compared with the 1990 level. According to the Eurostat (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database, accessed June 15, 2015 ), already in 2014 renewables reached the 17.1% of energy consumption and the cut of greenhouse gas was equal to –15% in 2013. Despite the recent crisis determined a contraction in primary energy demand (–9.6% in 2008–2013) in Italy, green performances primarily come to a constant growth of renewable facilities installed in the same period. For example, the Ministry of Economic Development (MiSE) reported that the green MW has doubled in 2008–2013 reaching the 50,153 MW (MiSE, Bilancio energetico nazionale 2013, Roma).
11. The Lucana energy company, established by Regional Law no. 31/2006, is in charge of an aggregate purchasing service of electricity and natural gas for regional public administrations (hospitals, municipalities, etc.), to install publicly owned green facilities or to make efficient the public energy system (i.e., public lighting), to support municipalities with the elaboration and management of the SEAP according to the Covenant of Mayors and to support companies and households to implement policies on sustainable energy and efficiency.
12. Source: National Institute of Statistics (Istat), 15th Population and housing census 2011, Rome; Chamber of Commerce of Potenza (www.pz.camcom.it, accessed February 1, 2015).
13. In the literature on community renewable energy the chance for local institutions to promote an innovative grassroots energy provision is strictly related to the dimension of trust, namely, the social capital (Magnani and Osti Citation2015; Walker et al. Citation2010; Wirth Citation2014). This dimension is proposed as a local endowment of a crucial factor that is difficult to recreate in other context. On the contrary, looking at the convergences between interests, goals and the relationality in the local energy experiences – as here proposed – the dimension of trust appears as a generated aspect of the actor-net and it can also help to explain the diversity of grassroots innovative experiences.
14. According to the Terna report Statistical Data on Electricity in Italy, in 2014 the regional share of renewable in gross electricity consumption reached the 60%.