Skip to main content

Energy Governance in Italy

Path Dependence, Policy Adjustments and New Challenges for Sustainability

Handbook of Energy Governance in Europe

Abstract

The chapter analyzes the structural constraints that influenced the decision-making processes and organization of the Italian energy sector. Although renewables account for over 17.5% of gross final energy consumption, the current energy system is still quite centralized, path-dependent, and hampered by discontinuous research, energy, and industrial policies.

Firstly, external and domestic drivers as well as coordination mechanisms and instruments for the energy transition are analyzed from a multilevel governance perspective. The chapter then reflects on the role the Italian incumbents played for the success of low carbon technologies, energy policies, and digitalization of the power sector. We claim that European policies will still provide a suitable model for Italian policy makers, but also that coherent measures are needed to keep fostering distributed generation or high-efficiency co-generation. Moreover, placing energy communities and prosumers at the center of the new energy model seems necessary to ensure a sustainable transition.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

References

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria Rosaria Di Nucci .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Di Nucci, M.R., Russolillo, D. (2019). Energy Governance in Italy. In: Knodt, M., Kemmerzell, J. (eds) Handbook of Energy Governance in Europe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73526-9_16-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73526-9_16-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73526-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73526-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Political Science and International StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Energy Governance in Italy
    Published:
    10 September 2019

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73526-9_16-2

  2. Original

    Energy Governance in Italy
    Published:
    03 June 2019

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73526-9_16-1