The transition from fossil fuels to that of renewable energy, or at least his promotion, require a paradigm shift. The economy of oil is a centralized system. It 'made of oil fields and mine shafts thousands of kilometers away from its end-users of oil and gas pipelines, large oil tankers, huge convoys of coal and gas carriers and ships, refineries and power plants for electricity generation of large size, large Kombinat industrial, high voltage power lines, of exploration companies, management and distribution, public and private, worldwide in scope and proportion of capital: a system that produces more and more centralization, despotism and war, transport and its impacts are a growing share of environmental and economic costs of the industry.
The logic of an economy of renewable energy sources instead requires a distributed system, which improves its efficiency as it is decentralized. Each community will have to produce, through mix of sources that vary from one context to another, most of its energy and electricity transmission networks will be subservient only to the balance between the different users.
It 's true that in reality, the logic with which it is pursuing the development of renewable sources is still largely follows the installation of the economy of fossil fuels: the extreme cases are made by large hydroelectric dams that devastate entire regions, or Desertec through projects such as, for, if it ever will work, to perpetuate our dependence on foreign energy supplies. Cases limited, but examples of logic, are represented by the way in which they were distributed in Italy incentives of the energy account (almost 90 percent in large facilities to the ground power over 20 kWp, and then excluded from the exchange on the spot that frequently have ravaged the landscape or even caused the uprooting of olive groves and vineyards, or delivered to the whole ridge mob gang to plant or wind farm with no relation to the territory). But they are examples of viscosity that accompanies the introduction of the new: a full-bodied viscosity due to vested interests that slow, but can also block the entrance to the sena world of what really is new.
The same applies to nuclear energy. Risk factor aside, it is still tied to a source destined to a rapid depletion (such as oil and natural gas) and a plant ipercentralizzato, which requires even a preventive militarization of the territory. All answers to the imperative infinite growth of consumption and production, which needs to consume increasing amounts of energy.
Instead, in the process of ecological conversion from an economy dependent on fossil energy sources - largely, if not in their entirety, imported from other parts of the planet - to a system based on the use of renewable energy sources in the area , the largest energy reserve available to a community consists of efficiency, namely the use of energy, which increases the productivity of resources used.
fact, fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and energy and fuels derived from them are not interchangeable with any of renewable sources considered in isolation, but only, if necessary, articulate and flexible mix of alternative sources, modulated by a very thorough knowledge of both the needs of local communities of the opportunities offered by the area . In many cases, moreover, is not to replace equipment and facilities that work with energy from fossil fuels with similar plants fueled by renewable sources, but to radically change the manner in which certain functions are exercised.
All this requires a profound readjustment plant and a switch of production that make this possible. Energy efficiency covers both loads, and may be promoted with great success in the civilian sector (building envelopes, heating, lighting and cooling, consumption of equipment) and in the mobility (sharing of vehicles, reduction of travel distances and frequencies) and power generation, with the exploitation of thermal effects, linking local networks with intelligent, interactive, distributed throughout not only consumers but also the generation.
The industry should gear up in terms of energy efficiency, to consume less and, above all, to put into circulation products that require less energy in all stages of their life cycle, from cradle to grave. Or, rather, from birth to their rebirth in the form of recycled materials, because the waste from the production and consumption are the mines of the future: those that will reduce the pressure on non-renewable resources and the territories from which they are extracted, but especially those that will reduce the mileage of these materials:
the economy of the recycling industry also, such as agriculture and food, tends to be suited to the objective of zero kilometers: resources will be in largely where they were discarded and where they will be worn again, and there will also be transformed and processed.
transport involving all sectors. To hook or by crook, the goods will have to travel less. The global economy will spread, making travel bits and atoms, drawings, plans, calculations and other information needed to organize and optimize decentralized production. It is also a process that will revitalize many of the local economies devastated by outsourcing. Energy efficiency in the field of mobility of people requires the strengthening of public mass transportation (ie trains, trams and ferries) and its integration with flexible mobility systems, that is shared vehicle: car-sharing, transport demand and taxi , maximizing the use of walking and cycling. And by minimizing, of course, air transport.
The main obstacles to the spread of renewable energy sources do not live today, in However, inherent limitations to these technologies, or even, as a priority in the costs of an economic nature - especially when the use of these sources is encouraged - but in the aspects of character organizational and management that arise when a technology designed and developed in the laboratory or in a different context is "immersed" in a socio-economic, cultural and, in many cases, even "natural", that is not prepared to accept them. The
processes that contribute to a restructuring of the economic system can bring the planet out from the era of fossil fuels are not limited to the use of renewables and energy efficiency. It includes many others, including the dematerialization of consumption, organic farming, flexible mobility, the culture of maintenance, etc.. They are all the exact opposite of the "great works" and Fordist mass production type to which governments around the world have tried to assign the 'out of the crisis ", and all require a different kind of direction. Why are interventions
distributed and scattered, highly differentiated, connected alla specificità degli ambienti e dei contesti sociali; per essere efficaci richiedono, sì, risorse cognitive specialistiche – ormai largamente diffuse in segmenti specifici di ogni comunità – ma soprattutto conoscenze pratiche del contesti sociali: conoscenze che solo chi vive e opera al loro interno può avere. Richiedono informazioni e tecnologie disponibili a livello globale, ma sono tanto più efficaci quanto più sanno adeguarsi alla dimensione locale della produzione e del consumo.
Un passaggio del genere comporta, tendenzialmente, il trasferimento, a territori più o meno circoscritti e alle comunità che li abitano, di larga parte delle responsabilità di governo dei processi economici che sono were previously the prerogative of the nation state, but that during the last decades of globalization have already been reduced, but without being detected by any other public authority of higher-level level: because they were seized or handed over to private finance.
Central to this transition to the territories is the role of local governments: municipalities or their voluntary mergers aimed at pooling resources and knowledge, or the joints of decentralized large metropolitan agglomerations, aimed to bring together managers and directors in the governance of the territory . In this step, the local body has a multiple role: it is a channel to communicate and provide resources finanziarie altrimenti non mobilitabili; è un volano per promuovere nuove iniziative imprenditoriali attraverso la trasformazione del proprio modo di operare e di gestire il proprio patrimonio; è fonte di legittimazione di nuove pratiche agli occhi della cittadinanza; è nodo del coordinamento e della diffusione di pratiche replicabili, ancorché nate in contesti locali e specifici, nei confronti degli altri territori o all’interno del territorio stesso.
Ma le amministrazioni locali non sono che uno dei poli del progetto di un trasferimento dei poteri di governo verso livello locale: per operare ci vogliono imprese: vecchie o nuove; pubbliche o private; o miste, o cooperative, o sociali: in questa dimensione il carattere locale dell’impresa – o un suo radicamento a livello locale, ancorché nel quadro di una rete a filiera lunga – è molto più importante delle dimensioni; e per questo può ritrovarsi in vantaggio.
Ma il “terzo attore” di una redistribuzione del potere di governo dell’economia a livello locale è la comunità stessa o, meglio, la “cittadinanza attiva”, attraverso le sue espressioni organizzate – università e centri di ricerca, sindacati, associazioni professionali, scuole, parrocchie, volontariato, comitati civici, ecc. – e il suo coinvolgimento diretto nelle iniziative intraprese; perché è a questo livello che risiedono quei saperi diffusi to which the public is the custodian and increasingly also a source of development. Knowledge that businesses today, despite much rhetoric about "making work" of knowledge, allow for the most part unused.
Some examples are: the model more prevalent this "transfer of power", although a minimum size and value of almost exclusively original, is perhaps represented by the GAS: Buying groups supportive. They are voluntary associations of active citizens who organize to skip the intermediary business - and its costs - and to access directly to the purchase of quality control: mainly, but not limited to, in food products (organic farming or conventional processes). In promoting their practice down to business and develop new knowledge: those that allow them to exercise control over the quality of what they buy.
But at the same time stimulate a growing number of businesses in farming and processing to meet the standards required and then take the road of conversion environment. In this process the stimulus is reciprocal: the producer who opened his farm to the consumer's checking, the forward - forward to some, the more willing to engage to do with it - his knowledge and in turn receive new stimuli.
still missing in this plot, the third actor: the local administration. In some rare cases begins to make its appearance. For example, the farmers market and the spread of urban gardens. But if the promotion of GAS, by spontaneous initiative of small groups of active citizens, was adopted by a local government, ensuring the involvement of organized users might involve a gradually increasing number of citizens, fostering a true conversion of the surrounding rural land, invest progressively to other products - not just necessarily local, but always characterized by a direct relationship with the partners that express the needs of a community.
Let us now transfer this pattern to energy: the energy market (gas and electricity) has been liberalized, but you can hardly expect that every user is going in and take these courses to change supplier whenever it has the convenience. But what I can do the individual user - even if it is a small company - it can make all the bargaining power of the associated users (some companies already do), and much better to promote, justify or warrant this association is the body Local.
to the market takes a mediation: a ESCo acting on behalf of all members, and that, in addition to trade on energy supplies, cuts in housing and enterprise users associated to promote energy efficiency measures, taking advantage of incentives (such as white certificates) at which a single user is not able to access. But turning the funds made possible by the sale of the incentives of the energy account.
The enhancement of renewable sources, if you have a roof, or relevance to the wind, or a flap that can be exploited geothermal available, can be done in a decentralized, or in association (and this solution there are already important examples), matching supply to a group of users to a central facility managed by the local or a company associated with them.
Naturalmente non potrà candidarsi a operazioni del genere un’amministrazione che non abbia innanzitutto provveduto ad attivare tutte le forme possibili di risparmio energetico e di ricorso alle fonti rinnovabili negli edifici e negli impianti che appartegono al suo patrimonio. E poiché questi interventi hanno bisogno di progettisti, di installatori e di manutentori, è in questo modo che si promuove la creazione e la diffusione di imprese in grado di rispondere a questa domanda, ponendo le premesse perché il territorio nel suo complesso non debba più ricorrere a imprese e personale che vengono da lontano (e che saranno poi poco disponibili per garantire una manutenzione tempestiva).
A un livello superiore di coordinamento between local authorities and neighboring territories, may also promote the development of producers and suppliers of plants, or to propose a restructuring of the production systems of exploitation of renewable resources, or their components, factories devoted to closing or downsizing intolerable (but this could allow productions of challenging harmful or even deadly, such as luxury cars and weapons, despite the fact that the markets should be doing well).
What is proposed here in the energy field can be repeated in many other areas, from phone bills and internet access to the contract jointly flexible mobility, land management and its hydrogeological setting.
What's the point? The points are two. First, with very few exceptions, local governments and especially their political staff (but also framed structure) have no culture, sensitivity and knowledge to start or even join in such processes. Second, even if they want, do not have and will have less and less operational tools. The Italian law - national violent version of the EU guidelines much less restrictive - requiring them to divest in the near future subsidiaries or associates, to entrust to private management and aggregation processes (see the cases of Hera, A2A, Enia, Iride, Acea, etc.). that more and more away from territory, its needs and, above all, its ability to direct control by users, to become financial holding company involved in the game that sparked worldwide and continues to play the current crisis.
To reverse route must exit from a culture of competitiveness (all against all, for anything other than the "survival") that makes no more than to lower the standards of those who live for their work, without offering any prospect of a genuine conversion environment. It is important that in their territories to be returned to local authorities the opportunity, as much openness in the face of its directors, of doing business, of promote agreements that ensure those who undertake to market products that correspond to a shared plan, to support redirection of production companies have no future, or that take away the future to others.
the beginning of last century, to provide the less privileged part of its managed electricity, water, gas, sewer, transportation, and then also waste management, health care, cultural, or the Socialist-led government of our democratic country had established businesses "municipal" that they could control directly, graces the cover of a national law desired by Giolitti. That system of public companies now required by law to dismantle it been done largely by patronage degenerate, without, however, that its privatization has brought no improvement for users, while still not a little helped to fuel a new wave of "financial activities" of the economy and "outsourcing" of services are entrusted to subcontracts based on the intensive exploitation of labor.
forms of intervention in the economy of the municipalities must surely change, and the transparency of all transactions involving the management of active citizenship will have to become unavoidable constraints, because they are the only defense against the degeneration of patronage, which open then the door to the infiltration and control of organized crime, but there will be no recovery without a radical environmental conversion by the local government the power to intervene in the management of the processes of production and consumption affecting their territory.
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