Of Other (Energy) Spaces

Abstract

This chapter features a case study in the southern Italian region of Puglia (Apulia), the rural area of Alta Murgia, which is partly included within the perimeter of the first National Rural Park in Italy (2004). We focus on the process of solar PV power development in these agricultural areas since the first Italian feed-in tariff system came into force (2005–2007). Fundamental to our purpose is to highlight the significant impacts of the political forces embodied in the planning process of these renewable energy projects. We consider not only the impacts on the socioeconomic development of the whole area over the last decade but also those on the landscape features and values that sustain and enable this development. National and regional renewable energy policies, on one hand, and the National Park Plan and Regulations, on the other, have engendered dramatically different consequences for the agricultural lands located inside and outside the perimeter of the protected area. The argument developed is that these two radically different approaches to the process of planning energy projects effectively reinforce the physical and symbolic gap existing between so-called particularly worthy landscapes and ordinary everyday landscapes (of energy). We highlight that the process of solar PV plant planning and development in the areas surrounding the Park has been essentially dominated and led by a sort of “site counter-logic.” This actually resulted in a “counter-site logic.” In the conclusion, we emphasize the potential for the planning process of green energy projects to act as an open-air laboratory for experimenting with a new integrated approach to energy, as both a notion and a natural fact.