Keywords

1 Introduction

This paper considers the issue of the necessary transition to a development model marked by sustainability from a territorial and heritage-led perspective, that is, by focusing on the territory and on its complexity and multidimensionality, which also includes its energy dimension. The scope is the local community, also identified by European energy directives as a strategic field of action.

This paper’s ultimate contribution is to propose the construction of a sustainable energy model on a local scale starting from an analysis of energy heritage resources and their potential combined with the enhancement of social innovation forms found in the local community. Renewable energy communities (RECs) are an effective way to facilitate the return of energy production to the territory, as opposed to a traditional deterritorialized, fossil-based, extra-local energy production model.

The experimental case study presented here concerns an energy community-building process in Tirano, Lombardy, but the analysis of energy heritage has been extended to the entire broad area of Media Valtellina, to get a better understanding of the interactions between the different components in the territory. This research shows that it is possible to increase energy production from renewable energy sources (RES), especially for photovoltaics, by applying an energy production model based on the enhancement of local heritage. Moreover, in a context where local community activism is mainly manifested in the sphere of volunteerism with no particular focus on environmental issues, there are important social innovation initiatives related to the enhancement of territorial heritage identity elements that can be drivers in energy community-making.

This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 frames the paper within the territorialist approach and scientific production on the topic of energy communities; Sect. 3 describes the mixed methodology, which combines territorial analysis and surveys through interviews with local stakeholders, Sect. 4 reports the energy assets of the study area and the RES mix that can be activated in addition to the main results of the survey conducted through the interviews, which are then commented in Sect. 5.

2 Literature Review

The vision of the energy transition expressed in this paper is within the scientific approach of the territorialist school, based on the consideration of territory as a highly complex living organism and of territorial heritage as the set of environmental, urban, rural, infrastructural and landscape elements, assets and systems, shaped by the long-lasting coevolutionary process between human settlement and environment (Magnaghi 2020). Territorial heritage elements have an intrinsic existence value, related to long-lasting identity, and a use value, related to the activation of heritage resources and their use and management (Poli 2015), including in the energy field. Territorial heritage thus has a dual significance:

  • some of its elements can take on energy values (e.g., agroforestry structures, water mills, canals…);

  • it provides the coherence framework within which to evaluate land transformation (e.g., in the production of energy from RES, the protection of rural landscapes or historical settlement types must be ensured).

The energy patrimonialization process (Magnaghi and Sala 2013; Bolognesi 2018), defined as the identification and use of whole territory resources for energy production (because each territory expresses an energy potential that changes concerning the specific places peculiarities, Scudo et al. 2011), is essentially based on two aspects:

  • overcoming a sectoral and functional approach to energy planning aimed at maximizing resource productivity according to a logic of predatory exploitation (Puttilli 2014), in order to propose an integrated, widespread, locally defined energy mix of various sources consistent with territorial heritage;

  • overcoming a top-down approach in energy planning and management forms (Magnani and Patrucco 2018).

The inadequacy of RES social acceptance approach in territories is widely discussed in literature (e.g., Woolsink 2010; Devine–Wright 2011): it is important to foster local community participation, even in the energy field, with local stakeholders taking an active part in the process aimed at promoting sustainable and durable local development projects. Experiences of renewable energy communities (REC) are emerging and several studies give a definition of the term (Walker and Devine-Wright 2008; Seyfang et al. 2013; Tricarico 2015; Magnani and Patrucco 2018) and attempt clustering (Candelise and Ruggieri 2019; Moroni et al. 2019; De Vidovich et al. 2021). This paper focuses on the fundamental return to the territory in energy production, a strategy that combines local energy resource enhancement with a renewed prominence of local stakeholders; energy communities can be an effective experiment for this energy transition strategy.

3 Methods

3.1 The Application of the Energy Patrimonialization Model

The mixed methodology by which the energy patrimonialization model has been applied to the case study consists of several steps described below.

  • Identification and cartographic representation of energy heritage (both natural and territorial resources), based on data from land-use mapping, regional technical maps, and national atlases on energy resources.

  • Analysis of the energy heritage and definition of a specific RES mix. Different resources required different methodologies. To estimate photovoltaic potential, for example, the r.sun function of Grass-Qgis (combining clivometry and slope exposure data) made it possible to obtain a grid of solar radiation per unit area (measured in kWh/m2). It was thus possible to associate solar radiation values with available roof areas (net of historical heritage buildings) and photovoltaic panel performance to obtain the amount of energy that can be produced. For forest biomass energy potential, Corine Land Cover has been used as starting data. Growth rate (m3/ha per year) and density value (kg/m3) were associated with each polygon classified by forest type (parameters drawn from Bernetti et al. 2009, Fagarazzi and Tirinnanzi 2015), to estimate forest regeneration capacity and, on this, calculate the percentage of residue from other wood processing, useful for energy production. Further development of hydropower would require a specific study on hydro-energy potential which is not addressed in this research.

  • Analysis of the relationship between local stakeholders and energy heritage to investigate the activism of local stakeholders in the energy sector and local development, the degree of participation and involvement of local populations and institutions, and the existence of conflicts on a local scale, with the exploration of social practices directly or indirectly involving the use of energy heritage. Seven semi-structured interviews with local stakeholders were carried out with snowball sampling, partly remotely and partly face-to-face, between June and September 2021. Interviewees include two members of local government, an expert on development dynamics venues, a cultural operator, two economic operators, and a member of the non-profit sector.

3.2 The Case Study of Tirano

Tirano is located in the borderland on the northern edge of Lombardy in the middle of Media Valtellina Valley, which constitutes the regional frame of reference for reorganizing the energy production and consumption system.

The Renewable Communities Report 2022 (Legambiente 2022) cites Tirano among the “100% Renewable Municipalities” for the important contribution of local and distributed renewable sources in covering local energy needs and the Alpine Energy Community of Tirano (SO) as an example of REC in the making.

The energy community arises in a context that benefits from a district heating plant with a 33 km network and 789 users reached with the service (Bonifazi et al. 2022), which can already rely on an energy self-generation system that meets about 50% of local community needs (Coletta et al. 2020). The Tirano district heating plant operated by the TCVVV Company (Teleriscaldamento Cogenerazione Valtellina-Valchiavenna-Valcamonica) began operating in 2000; it was started by public financing and a widespread partnership of small local shareholders on which REC’s community-engagement path is built on. Thus, the development of an energy community can therefore be the driving factor for increasing energy production from RES.

Open access cartographic data for Media Valtellina Valley (land use, elevation grid, technical cartography) were sourced from the Lombardy Region cartographic portal. Data on average wind speed came from the RSE Wind Atlas. Data on RES plants already in operation can be found on the GSE Atlaimpianti portal.

4 Results

4.1 Identification and Cartographic Representation of Energy Heritage

Media Valtellina has a rather articulated structure and a rich heritage value endowment to be conserved and enhanced; protection of high environmental and landscape value elements has been formalized by establishing Sites of Community Interest, parks, and special conservation areas. Territorial heritage includes, for example, the hydrographic network of the River Adda and its tributaries, elements related to the agro-sylvo-pastoral economy (forests, pastures, maggenghi, cultivations, terraces), historical settlement structures, and ancient systems of hydraulic energy exploitation.

Energy production aimed at enhancing local resources and involving the whole territory in composing a locally defined RES mix must interact virtuously with environmental and landscape heritage elements and must prevent criticalities in the traditional centralized energy production model. Cartographic selection and composition in a map (with the Qgis software) of potentially energy-usable elements contained in land use or maps of average wind speed is the first step to define the endogenous energy potential of the territory.

The map in Fig. 1 depicts heritage resources theoretically available for energy production in the whole of Media Valtellina and in detail in the Municipality of Tirano, namely:

Fig. 1
An illustrated map of Media Valtellina highlights the regions of industrial zones, rooftops of recent buildings, orchards, forests, vineyards, areas with high wind speed, water mills, and rivers and streams. An inset map illustrates the Municipality of Tirano.

Theoretical availability of renewable energy sources in Media Valtellina and the Municipality of Tirano (boxed area). Processed using the Qgis software

Full size image

  • urbanized areas and building roofs. The most significant contribution to energy production is expected to come from the recent expansion of built-up areas and productive/commercial areas of main centers;

  • areas with an average wind speed greater than 4 m/s, mostly localized close to mountain peaks;

  • forests, important ecological-environmental and landscape resources but also energy resources: residues from silvicultural activities and waste resulting from wood processing can contribute to energy production from RES;

  • tree crops, a typical feature of Valtellina both on the plain (apple orchards) and the Rhaetian side of the valley in terraced vineyards: pruning clippings can contribute to biomass energy production;

  • the catchment area of the River Adda and its tributaries, with numerous hydroelectric power plants for energy production and ancient watermills in some cases is already undergoing redevelopment and refunctionalization.

The map, therefore, includes elements belonging to the territorial heritage that can be enhanced for energy purposes such as old mills, forests with silvicultural residues or vineyards and orchards with pruning clippings, as well as elements that are part of the settlement system which are not part of the territorial heritage, e.g., recent building roofs.

4.2 Analysis of the Energy Heritage Potential and Definition of a Specific RES Mix

The analysis of the availability of renewable sources yields a set of potential energy resources in the study area. A plurality of renewable sources contributes to the composition of the Tirano energy mix (Table 1): biomass from pruning and forestry, solar PV, and hydroelectric (for wind power, in suitable landscape areas the average wind speed is not high enough, so this RES has not been included in the mix).

Table 1 The energy mix in Tirano
Full size table

Energy production has to be consistent with territorial heritage. Energy patrimonialization process effectiveness should therefore be assessed about hydro-geo-morphological and ecosystem balances that underlie the bioregion functioning. The energy production value of local heritage elements has to take into account the other functions (regulatory, support, cultural…) that the same assets can provide for the territory, and the various “interferences” among functions require a use priorities assessment. The analysis of individual RES energy potential, aimed at identifying the local energy mix best composition, used parameters diversified by source to define resource availability and the compatibility of use with territorial heritage protection and regeneration. For example, research identified land consumption as a key factor in determining the impact of energy production facilities, due to the importance of reserving its use for agricultural functions and preserving it from artificial cover: therefore, places in urbanized areas are favored and certain land use categories have been excluded from possible plant installation. After developing a solar radiation map of the whole territory (as described in the method section), available building roofs were identified, after excluding those already occupied by photovoltaic panels (Atlaimpianti GSE) as well as the historical building heritage to be protected. No ground-mounted PV installations were planned in order to prevent any land consumption. The roof area to be used for photovoltaic panels’ installation was conservatively estimated as 1/3 of the roofing projection on the horizontal plane (Scudo 2013). Therefore, potentially obtainable energy was estimated by summing the potential of each rooftop classified as suitable. The PV energy potential for Tirano is estimated to be about 30.6 GWh per year.

In terms of forest biomass, its energy potential was calculated taking care not to exceed the forest annual regeneration capacity and considering only the residual biomass fraction of other wood processing to be used for energy production. Areas unsuitable for biomass harvesting such as protected areas or forests lying on very steep terrain have been also subtracted from the total forest area. On the remaining forested areas, as per the Corine Land Cover classification, an algorithm is applied to individual polygons that relate to the area, annual growth rate by species, density, and the woody residue percentage to obtain the amount of biomass available (Bernetti et al. 2009), quantified in Media Valtellina as about 9900 t/year. Considering a heating value of 3.4 MWh/t (Fagarazzi and Tirinnanzi 2015), therefore, about 33.66 GWh of energy can be produced (in the Municipality of Tirano about 1294 t/year of forest biomass for 4.4 GWh of energy).

To estimate the energy potential of tree crop pruning biomass, the 2018 land use entries “vineyards” and “orchards” are used as references. Assuming the productivity of pruning biomass per hectare of 2 tons, with a heating value of 2.3 MWh/t, it is estimated that tree crop pruning biomass can produce about 7.1 GWh of energy per year in the whole of Media Valtellina (1.6 GWh in the Municipality of Tirano).

The current mix of energy production from RES, based essentially on biomass feeding Tirano district heating plant and hydroelectric plants, even large ones, can be implemented by focusing on the spread of photovoltaics on buildings roofs (currently underdeveloped) and the use of forest biomass linked to a local dimension and less dependent on bioregion for raw material supply. Recovery activities of abandoned local heritage elements, for example, chestnut groves, can also have the side effect of increasing the availability of raw materials to be exploited for energy production.

4.3 Analysis of the Relationship Between Local Stakeholders and Energy Heritage

Another part of this research focused on the interplay between heritage and the local community to investigate the level of community involvement in local heritage enhancement (Table 2) by conducting semi-structured interviews with local stakeholders. Research showed a fair social mobilization of activities that need to be connected through the socio-productive institutes of energy communities. The analysis of the relationship between heritage and local community revealed the local figures that could be involved in the creation of a multi-sectoral and multi-person energy community in Tirano: local institutions, third-sector cooperatives, associations, businesses, farmers, property or land owners, and citizens willing to participate as protagonists in the energy transition.

Table 2 Assessment indicators on the community-heritage relationship
Full size table

The main critical issues that emerged from the interviews are summarized below:

  • difficulties for the forest/wood supply chain and the abandoned state of local forests (due largely to fragmentation among private individuals of forest ownership) which suggests that a large amount of biomass feeding the district heating plant is not strictly locally sourced;

  • recent recapitalization of the district heating plant management company with the entry of Cogeninfra SpA Group, which acquired 71% of TCVVV shares and significantly reduced the “weight” of small local partners who started the project in the early 2000s;

  • conflicting positions on Valtellina methanization process. Valtellina upstream of Villa di Tirano is currently a non-methanized area, and there is a plan to extend the methane gas network to the entire valley over time. Respondent positions are mixed; methane would clearly compete with the district heating system already in operation in Tirano, as well as potentially discouraging any investment in this technology in other municipalities, yet for some people it may be used in small villages not connected to the district heating and in industrial areas;

  • concerns about the risks associated with the use of forest biomass for the impact on and reduction of biodiversity.

Examples of local stakeholder planning and activism in local development also emerged from the interviews:

  • conversion to liquefied natural gas (LNG) of the vehicle fleet of a local logistics company, with the supply of liquid bio-methane from a zootechnical cooperative, a virtuous example of circular economy;

  • terracing recovery projects implemented by public–private partnerships, leveraging European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI) and other resources made available by a banking foundation (Cariplo), which also promoted a local development strategy aimed at creating the cultural district of Valtellina;

  • the presence of cultural heritage recovery and sustainability activities (Butega Valtellinese, Confraternita del chisciöl…);

  • activities of the social cooperative “Il Gabbiano” for the reintegration of people in socially fragile conditions through agricultural work on otherwise abandoned land; the cooperative also plans to undertake activities in the forestry sector to collaborate with wood processors and energy producers.

5 Discussion

It is possible to implement Tirano's energy mix and increase local production from RES, particularly forest biomass and photovoltaics. Table 1 shows that the current production of energy from biomass is higher than what could be produced using only local forest residues according to sustainability criteria: this fact, combined with the poor exploitation of the local forest-wood supply chain (which emerged from the interviews) suggests that the material comes largely from outside Media Valtellina. Assuming, however, that 30% of raw materials come from within the territorial boundaries of the study area (thus well below the 70 km that define the short supply chain) as already currently used in the plants in operation, the use of the remainder can be assumed to increase local thermal energy production by about 50%.

Analysis revealed that there is great potential to increase electricity production from RES using existing building roofs for photovoltaic panel installation without any land consumption. In addition to the plants already present in the area, panels can be installed on a large number of surfaces, for a more than fivefold increase in electricity production from photovoltaics (estimated producible energy 30.6 GWh/year).

The issue of local supply chain development for energy production, a topic covered in all interviews with local stakeholders, brings out the contradiction with the methanization process that is starting in Tirano (following a debate lasting for years). The use of methane, a non-renewable energy source, is in obvious competition with the biomass district heating system already operating in the area and in contrast to the necessary decarbonization of the energy system. Perhaps an implementation of REC, enhancing local endogenous energy potential, can help overcome this contradiction.

Social innovation initiatives related to the enhancement of territorial heritage identity elements have grown in Tirano. Energy communities can develop from these innovation niches, and the local stakeholders involved can become part of the community that promote and manage self-sustainable local development processes.

The level of community involvement in local heritage enhancement can be assessed from practices put in place for socially recognized common care. The “Il Gabbiano” social cooperative offering job placement opportunities in agriculture (work in vineyards, orchards, and the cultivation of ancient varieties of wheat…) to fragile members of society in synergy with local economic activities is one of the figures set to play a key role within the energy community. It's an example of local development based on territorial milieu care and enhancement, in fact, this fruitful collaboration contributes to good practice preservation and reproduction as well as spreading awareness of the value of local identity elements.

The community-engagement pathway is the result of lasting cultural awareness action carried out to activate the widespread shareholder project in the district heating power plant building process (De Vidovich et al. 2021). Signs of territorial heritage self-recognition initiatives can be identified in some actions that institutional figures, associations, and citizens are carrying on in Tirano and throughout the regional context with public–private partnerships, for example the territorial cooperation project “Preserving and enhancing the cultural landscape of Media Valtellina” funded by Cariplo Foundation for work on terracing, or again the project for chestnut grove recovery by Ambiente Valtellina.

6 Conclusion

An energy community can be defined as a social cultural and economic organization that locally self-produces its energy needs by enhancing its own territorial resources while protecting its environmental and landscape common goods and thus reducing its ecological footprint (Bolognesi and Magnaghi 2020). It is a community that takes ownership of its common goods heritage and enhances it triggering self-sustainable local development models.

Processing a sustainable energy model in Tirano on a local scale, a REC still in the making but rich in heritage resources, represents an opportunity to experiment with a return to territory in energy production. The application of an energy patrimonialization model to the Tirano area has shown that RES production can significantly increase and that local stakeholders already involved in cooperation experiences can play an important role in energy community development.

Beyond the purpose of facilitating RES penetration throughout the country and bringing energy demand and production closer together, energy communities can provide opportunities to experiment with approaches that can combine land care with social capital enhancement, with positive spin-offs in terms of self-sustainable development and the creation of opportunities for the population (particularly for the empowerment of disadvantaged groups) and for peripheral territories (e.g., under the National Strategy for Inner Areas). The use of still untapped local energy resources can produce a great increase in overall national energy production, necessary to achieve the goals set by international strategies for the energy transition and mitigate global warming.