Energy without Citizens? National and Local Discourses on Sustainable Energy in Italy

During energy transitions, as the one we are facing, political discourses play a pivotal role by acting on structural levers as well as by stimulating cultural and societal shifts towards new production and management systems (Fouquet & Pearson, 2012). In particular, we assume that full sustainability requires energy consumers to become citizens who are aware and actively involved in the management of the transition process. This shift requires meaning making processes to be activated, stable discourses to be debated, and new ideological discourses to be mobilised and developed (Castro, 2012; Hajer & Versteeg, 2005). From this premises, this contribution focuses on the way energy users are socially constructed in discourses on sustainable energy in Italy during the last few years (2009-2012) . Data are constituted by large textual corpora including political debates (parliament and region), interviews with local decision makers and experts, visual data. Corpora were subjected to qualitative and quantitative content analyses. Results show that, despite the interest towards renewables and decentralized production systems, users are almost excluded from the development of new representations of sustainable energy. Citizens, especially at the national level, are excluded from the picture or are represented as passive consumers and inadequate actors. Results suggest that Italy is becoming a “realising” community, with high presence of technology but low consciousness of energy transition.