District heating and ambivalent energy transition paths in urban and rural contexts

ABSTRACT

Most institutions and industrial actors believe that district heating infrastructure can play a key role in accelerating the transition to low-carbon energy systems. In this article we test this belief in Italy, starting from a census of all existing plants, subdivided by sources of supply and business organization models. We isolate two types of district heating (urban and rural) and find that they are different with respect to their approaches to energy transition. In rural areas, networks constitute systems that can empower the local techno-institutional complex to achieve a technological leap. Set in a pre-existing social network, district heating reinforces a sense of community and facilitates the involvement of various local players in a collective project. In the case of biomass, we are faced with local systems that have almost completed the transition with regard to the production of thermal and sometimes electric energy. In urban areas, on the other hand, networks represent functional devices for the stabilization of the techno-institutional complex. They allow cities to work on the circularity of some economies, generating added value from the same factors of production. The discrepancy between urban and rural contexts thus highlights the need to consider the ambivalence of district heating technology.

KEYWORDS:

• District heating
• carbon lock-in
• energy transition
• technological complex

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Giovanni Carrosio holds a PhD in Transborder Policies of the Daily Life from the International University Institute for European Studies, Gorizia, Italy. He is Senior Assistant Professor in Government of Network Systems and Environmental Sociology in the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Trieste, Italy.

Natalia Magnani holds a PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. She is Senior Assistant Professor in Environmental Sociology and Urban/Rural Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Research of the University of Trento, Italy. Her research interests include energy transition, sustainable development and environmental conflicts.

Notes

1 All the data contained in this paragraph have been processed by the authors starting from the census of the district heating systems present in Italy. The census is managed by the association of Italian district heating plants (Associazione Italiana Riscaldamento Urbano, AIRU).

2 The map of Italy in Figure 2 represents only the part of Italy where biomass plants are present. Indeed, in Southern Italy there are no biomass plants of any sort.