Territory and energy sustainability: the challenge of renewable energy sources

The issue of energy production is assuming an ever more pivotal role in the most recent international debate on sustainable development. In particular, the development of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) is seen as a great opportunity to achieve sustainability objectives and targets. This consideration reinforces the great debate on the active role of the local dimension in achieving sustainability objectives. A RES-based energy model implies complex re-organisation of the territory with, usually, increased decentralisation of energy production and consumption and the use of widely-diffused energy resources. This paper argues that utilisation of RES implies the need for careful consideration of their relationship with the territory and, more generally, with the local scale. The real commitment of the local scale in promoting RES development depends on the multiple possible relations that exist between renewable energy and socio-economic complexity, on the one hand, and ecosystem complexity, on the other. This paper aims to achieve three main objectives: (1) establish the role of the local dimension in the most recent debate on sustainable development; (2) illustrate how multiple relationships between RES and the territory may be represented; (3) verify how, through RES, the local dimension can actively contribute to pursuing sustainable development objectives.