Viviana Ferrario

Looking Beneath the Landscape of Carbon Neutrality

In recent years, European and national policies have given strong support to renewable energies. The Common Agricultural Policy, in particular, has been pushing farmers to produce renewable energy, both as a contribution to sustainable development and as a way to achieve better economic results. Energy production from biomass, biogas and biofuel produced by farmers – agroenergy – is beginning to produce landscape changes. Despite their apparent contribution to sustainability, these new landscapes can be – and often are – contested. The Veneto region, due to the extreme proximity between agricultural and urban land, is a very interesting area for observing new agroenergy landscapes, opposed by nearby residents. Far from being considered simply as an expression of a selfish NIMBY attitude, local conflicts question both local transformation decisions and the very principle of agroenergy. Their arguments must be taken into account if we intend to design a fairer, more democratic ‘landscape of carbon neutrality’.

Hydropower Exploitation in the Piave River Basin (Italian Eastern Alps)

Renewable energies have been one of the main driving forces of European landscape change in the last ten years. Despite its acknowledged contribution to sustainable development, ‘renewable’ is not ipso facto ‘sustainable’: on the contrary renewable energies can have negative impacts and create both environmental and social conflicts. Landscape is often at the heart of these conflicts, both as an asset to protect and as a tool for use in debate. This situation leads us to reflect on the question of ‘landscapes of energy’. This paper investigates the relationships between energy production and the territory, using landscape as a tool for a critical review of past and current hydropower exploitation in the Piave river basin, in the Italian Eastern Alps. Regional policies and local practices related with the development of small hydropower plants are analysed from the point of view of the strategies, values and meanings expressed by the different stakeholders. The analysis reveals various weaknesses of the policies and the practices that undermine the objective of integrating energy into the landscape.