Community energies in South Tyrol: the current situation between favourable historical and institutional factors and the critical relations with the market

In recent years, European and national policies have increasingly promoted and supported certain strategies to accelerate energy transition processes and one of the favoured strategies has been indicated in the diffusion of community energies based on the concept, often rather rhetorical, of widespread participation by citizens in the management and governance of clean energy. This process also opens up a reconfiguration of the market and its transformation at different levels to allow the decentralization based on citizens engagement. However, the energy sector presents characteristics that do not immediately favour direct participation in the governance of the energy resource, for reasons related to the high technical specialisation required to understand and regulate technological issues, but also due to the instability and uncertainty typical of the energy market. However, some territories, even in Italy, present historical and institutional characteristics particularly favourable to the reception of decentralisation, pluralisation and segmentation drives in the energy sector and market. For these reasons, the paper focuses on a specific Italian area, the South Tyrol, placed in the North-East, where empirical research was carried out with the aim of analysing the building up process of energy community initiatives. In particular, the author highlights the role of some historical and institutional conditions favourable to their development, related to the ‘historical energy cooperatives’ and the cooperative model of organization still widespread in the south Tyrolean society. Finally, the analysis dwells on the emerging scenarios regarding the RECs construction process and the two main models that seem to prevail at this stage, also with reference to the features of the energy market and economic incentive policies.