Paper Short Abstract:

The energy transition process has territorial declinations concerning territories' resources and development policies. The survey focuses on the relationships and contradictions between exploiting renewable sources and practices of self-production and energy sharing.

Paper Abstract:

Energy is a conceptual key to analysing specific regimes' political, social and economic arrangements. The challenges of climate change highlight not only the role of renewable energy sources but also a different way of considering energy, no longer as a commodity but as a common good to be shared. Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) express the possibility of producing and sharing electricity by enhancing autonomy from the central system and the free energy market, favouring renewable energy sources. This proposal aims to investigate the practices of energy communities in the context of eastern Sicily, in the specific area known as the Simeto Valley, a context characterised by forms of land abandonment, climate change issues and speculative processes for the construction of large photovoltaic, wind and incineration plants. The ethnographic investigation intends to analyse how energy communities' organisational and productive model promotes territorial development and growth, considering the contradictions between the exploitation of renewable sources and energy sharing policy. Analysing the discourses and practices of the actors in the REC has made it possible to highlight two interconnected aspects: the interpretations of energy resources and the development prospects of the territory. Energy production and sharing offer an alternative for actors to be autonomous from the centralised supply model and the economic exploitation of private companies. Despite being interpreted as the eternal unknown, energy becomes a tool to build opportunities for shared growth of the territory: an alternative way of pooling interests compared to the extractive and speculative models of the energy market.