Energy Communities and Smart Villages in the Madonie Sicilian Inner Rural Area

Abstract

In the biggest island of the Mediterranean, Sicily, there are territories that still preserve their original identities and characteristics. At its center, the Madonie Park, a UNESCO Geopark, encloses twenty-one villages with an attractive location and naturalistic and cultural and architectural qualities, but they are plagued by depopulation and technological backwardness. The abstract presents the research’s results aimed at the implementation of green communities in this inner rural area for the establishment of a network of smart villages, reducing environmental impacts, meeting global goals, and being resilient. The main objective of the research is to create a network of smart villages creating an effective collaboration between public and private entities with a network of stakeholders and investors in order to have a transformative project of these small centers. The Madonie District still needs innovation, digitalization, and green and sustainable strategies to play a large role in territorial competitiveness. One of the strategies that need to be implemented is the constitution of energy districts to share and produce energy from renewable sources and to have companies that invest and project the tradition of the past toward the future optimizing the state of fact. The establishment of a territorial network in which all stakeholders put into the system produce circular economy is a warranty of the formation of a virtuous short chain to accredited Madonie companies that know the architecture of the place and enhance it without compromising it. Through energy communities, sustainability is improved, reducing, for example, the emission of CO₂, having an increased energy self-sufficiency and guaranteeing saving in bills thanks to the self-production and energy sharing between members of the green community. The creation of guidelines is useful to propose and concretize a program of green sustainable technological development in the Madonie area. A “modus operandi” to be implemented in this area and transposed in other ones with the same characteristics, assisted by control systems for monitoring results.