Sustainability and Renewable Energy Communities

The seminar aims to critically examine the role of Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) within the framework of ecological transition and sustainability policies. RECs, understood as new forms of energy and territorial governance, provide a privileged arena for analyzing processes of social, institutional, and technological innovation, highlighting both tensions and opportunities connected to decarbonization.

The discussion will focus on three main dimensions: I)  the regulatory and policy framework, with particular attention to multi-level governance and its implications for territorial management; II) participatory and social inclusion dynamics, explored through qualitative methods and interpretivist approaches; III) the ability of RECs to produce alternative narratives and counter-narratives to dominant models of energy development. Adopting a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, the seminar seeks to contribute to the scientific debate on sustainability by emphasizing the potential of RECs as spaces for experimentation and the co-production of energy commons.