The energy transition as a driver of new development is not a determinate equation. That is, if you implement it you can only have certain solutions and not others. They would be positive solutions for the countries they want reconvert industrial models. If we also want to recompose the social fabric in a sustainable way, the results can also be different.
Unfortunately, Italy has cases in which the above equation has not been achieved at all. TO Toast in place of two large decommissioned coal power plants, years later, nothing has been achieved. The reasons are different: appeals to the TAR, programs of theEnel that environmentalists don't like, local institutions in surplace. The case of the failed reconversion of Brindisi thus ended up in the program entrances ofXNUMX-XNUMX business days. A program that promotes a shared, non-traumatic transition towards the green.
Brindisi has been analyzed as a critical element of the transition to energy production from renewable sources. A retaliation like there are many in the history of Southern Italy. In the Apulian city "over 30 years ago a coal power plant and chemical plants were built with the aim of supporting the development of Southern Italy" he says Nadia Cerone, Enea researcher who studied the case together with other colleagues.
An industrial cycle is over
The Brindisi Est power plant was closed at the end of 2012 and the gradual phase out of the other Southern power station, expected by 2025, have had a negative impact on all plant workers. The stop was a historic event in the history of the industrialization of the South end of a cycle of state intervention in depressed areas. It wasn't easy to imagine something different. Turning off power plants meant darkening a horizon. “The economic growth of the area - continues Cerone - has gone hand in hand with the decline in agriculture and tourism. There was a consequent emergence of strong tensions due to the lack of involvement of the territory in strategic decision-making processes for its own development".
The plants were polluting, there were high carbon dioxide emissions and it was also necessary to intervene to protect public health. Entrances did not know the history of the two power plants and the complex story of the intervention of the Italian State in the South. “The general objective of Entrances was to develop new knowledge on the social aspects of the energy transition in the regions coal and carbon-intensive and make recommendations for managing that transition,” he adds Nadia Cerone.
Don't abandon the energy transition
Should we doubt the effectiveness of a green economy? We don't run. In Puglia, field investigations have established the lack of new job opportunities, the acceleration of migration of young people and a progressive aging of the population. From 2001 to 2020 the population of the province of Brindisi decreased by 19 thousand units. There has not been a "clear alternative to industrial development" writes Enea. It is tacit that the solutions to an antiquated, often uneconomical industrial system must be constructed intelligently by explaining to people clearly what they should expect. Ghost toast of a model unfavorable. Maybe no one wanted it, but it happened. In search of a specific equation, as we said at the beginning.
