Thesis title: Energia e Territorio: la “Transizione Energetica” nei sistemi insulari minori
Abstract (English Version)
This research contributes to the contemporary debate on the energy transition and its territorial implications, with a specific focus on small, non-interconnected islands, interpreted as laboratory spaces for ecological and social transformation. Its main objective is to reframe the energy question within its territorial, political, and cultural dimensions, analyzing how decarbonization processes are reshaping marginal territories and exposing the contradictions between global sustainability narratives and the actual local capacity to implement such policies.
Despite their physical limitations and structural fragility, small islands represent complex ecosystems in which technical, environmental, social, and institutional dimensions converge. In these contexts, the energy transition appears in an amplified form, revealing the tension between two contrasting development models: on the one hand, a centralized, extractive system based on large-scale infrastructures and monopolistic logics; on the other, a decentralized and community-oriented model aimed at energy autonomy, cooperation, and territorial justice.
The research builds upon a multidisciplinary theoretical framework integrating socio-technical transition models (Multi-Level Perspective and Strategic Niche Management) with the approaches of critical geography of energy and political ecology. It specifically investigates how Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) can act not only as technical devices for distributed production, but also as institutional and social instruments capable of generating territorial capital, social cohesion, and new forms of democratic governance of energy.
Methodologically, the research adopts a multi-scalar and situated perspective. At the supra-local scale, it examines the European and national regulatory frameworks and funding programs (Clean Energy for EU Islands, the Italian PNRR “Isole Verdi,” and the CACER Decree). At the local scale, the empirical analysis focuses on two case studies — Ventotene and Lampedusa — investigated through qualitative methods, including document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and direct observation of participatory and planning processes.
The findings show that the energy transition in small Italian islands remains an incomplete, fragmented, and unequal process. Technological barriers (limited storage and grid capacity), administrative constraints (delays in regulatory implementation), and financial limits (the required 60% co-financing rate) continue to hinder the development of inclusive and community-based energy models. In particular, the co-financing requirement tends to exclude peripheral municipalities and low-income households while enabling the involvement of large private energy companies.
This dynamic risks producing a privatization of the transition, whereby major corporations, though formally excluded from RECs, shape their economic viability through service contracts and balancing mechanisms. As a result, the same extractive and centralized logics that characterized the fossil-fuel industrial era are reproduced under a green guise. The promise of an energy democracy grounded in autonomy and participation risks remaining largely unfulfilled, turning into what has been defined as an adaptive rhetoric of ecological neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005; Swyngedouw, 2010; Carrosio, 2015).
Nevertheless, the research highlights tangible signs of change: the implementation of the “Isole Verdi” program, the emergence of micro-production initiatives, and the growing energy awareness among citizens and local authorities are contributing to the construction of a new territorial language of energy. Although partial and fragile, these experiences demonstrate that the energy transition can serve as a catalyst for social and political innovation, reshaping the relationships between energy, space, and community.
The thesis argues that a truly just and transformative transition must be founded on a renewed political and social pact between institutions and territories, overcoming the subordination of public purposes to profit-oriented logics. Energy policy should be conceived not merely as a technical optimization strategy but as a project of collective emancipation and territorial recomposition. In this perspective, small islands assume a paradigmatic role: no longer the peripheries of the national energy system, but laboratories of energy self-governance, capable of combining sustainability, democracy, and spatial justice.