Tag Archive for: energy transition

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1264 | | Renewable Energy Communities as key factors to implement a just renewable energy transition? Experiences from the European context | Daniele Mezzapelle (1); Beatrice Ruggieri (2); Silvia Grandi Grandi (3)

The energy transition is one of the biggest challenges ahead and is identified as an opportunity to mitigate ghg emissions as well as to build fairer energy systems (Healy and Barry, 2017; McCauley and Heffron, 2018). In this regard, Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) are considered as an essential measure to boost renewable energies, energy citizenship and energy democracy (Di Silvestre et al., 2021; Wahlund and Palm, 2022). Moreover, the EU is placing great emphasis on RECs and collective self-consumption as two key-strategies to implement a just renewable energy transition (Verde and Rossetto, 2020). Relying on a growing legislation on “community-owned renewable energy” in the EU, several experiences of RECs are slowly emerging across the EU member states, showing both opportunities and limitations of these innovative tools and socio-legal institutions (Heldeweg and Saintier, 2020) in effectively changing energy systems. In particular, the extremely complex regulatory system is still under development in EU countries so that the RECs governance continue to remain uncertain, thus hampering their reinforcement as transition tools.
While a more critical literature on RECs is emerging, the general approach remains excessively optimistic on their potential for transforming fossil energy systems – at the roots of the extractive capitalist rationales – into green and ecological ones. Without neglecting the key-role of RECs in the energy transition, the aim of this session is to invite critical research perspectives in order to strenghten the debate on how to design and achieve a just transition through community energy actions. Specifically, we are interested in both empirical and theoretical contributions that reflect on existing experiences as well as on on-going projects of RECs and other forms of community energy across the whole european space (urban but also rural and inner areas, island territories…) to provide considerations on geographical and cartographical analysis, drivers and obstacles, potentially related conflicts and benefits, resources spatial implications (technic endowments life cycle issues, socio-environmental impacts), social acceptance, green (washing?) narratives, RECs governance schemes.  The session will be in english and will host individual as well group presentations. 

Daniele Mezzapelle (1); Beatrice Ruggieri (2); Silvia Grandi Grandi (3)
(1) Università per Stranieri di Siena (Unistrasi), (2) Università di Bologna (Unibo), (3) Università di Bologna (Unibo)

 
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1175 | | Global Energy – energy crisis, energy transition, energy geography | Balázs Kulcsár (1)

Description of the proposed session: the energy sector is a key pillar of the global economy, which is currently undergoing a major transformation. This change is based on the finite nature of fossil resources and their impact on the planet’s climate, which also raises the question of the future habitability of the Earth. The current system is demonstrably unsustainable. The need to transform the energy sector is thus becoming increasingly widely accepted. The energy crisis caused by the Russia-Ukraine war is a strong signal that this process is accelerating. The changes involve not only a shift from fossil fuels to renewables but also changes in consumption patterns, policies and support schemes, technological development and efficiency improvements, smart grid deployment, decentralization, energy self-sufficiency, land use, and environmental pressures.
The complexity of geosciences links them to the global energy system in a thousand ways, with all its segments actively contributing to the transformation of the energy economy and its sustainable path.
The “Global Energy” section invites contributions from scholars who study the geographical aspects of the energy sector, which is essential for the functioning of the global world, and who are interested in analyzing such phenomena from different spatial perspectives.  Two topical and thus prominent themes of the session are the European energy crisis and the energy transition.

Balázs Kulcsár (1)
(1) University of Debrecen Faculty of Engineering, Hungary, Debrecen

 
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1175 | 217 | Towards a just energy transition?: energy consumption and residential segregation in the metropolitan area of Barcelona | Veronica Mejia, Joan Checa, Joan Lopez

The reserach explores the relationship between social inequalities and the energy transition in the Barcelona metropolitan area. Thus, it analyzes to what extent the necessary process of improving energy efficiency and decarbonization can be associated not with a reduction but with an increase in inequalities. On the one hand, it is confirmed that the population with the lowest incomes resides in inefficient real estate parks and has a lower propensity than the average to take measures to improve the said situation. On the other hand, the more affluent areas have a greater propensity to implement self-generated electricity systems, as well as a greater presence of electric vehicles. Thus, to date, self-generation facilities tend to be located in a much higher proportion in high-middle-income areas with a dispersed urban configuration than in low-income areas. In a context in which the economic effort that households must make to meet their energy needs is not proportional to their income, this pattern in innovations could result in an increase in social inequalities in terms of access to energy_x000D_
The territorial concentration processes of both situations can come to consolidate social inequality and spatial segregation, which makes it necessary to adopt corrective policies.

Veronica Mejia, Joan Checa, Joan Lopez
Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

 
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