Federica Mangiulli (p)

Vanessa Avanci

This paper aims to offer a conceptual framework for understanding the elements characterizing the transformative dimension of urban governance policies and strategies towards a just and sustainable transition, breaking down the obstacles and enabling the response of local systems to global challenges. .
It is in the transition towards sustainability that the European Union sees the solution to the environmental, economic and social crisis. The member states first declined the global agreements, the national governance strategies and after the urban experiments, adopting different methods to decline the transition towards sustainability. Transition initiatives often not adequate to the expectations for which they were launched and their short duration makes it impossible to measure their impact. Urban governance, paying little attention to local characteristics, does not react effectively to the obstacles to the transition process towards sustainability. The result is an expansion of the pre-existing imbalances and inequalities.
A comparative analysis is proposed between the approach developed by the Driving Urban Transition and that proposed by the Wuppertal Institute to understand which local elements define the transformative dimension of urban governance, in order to stimulate the city to a change that increasingly tends towards a transition. fair and sustainable, limiting its impact on the quality of life.

Claudia Serra-Sala (p)

Federica Mangiulli

The energy transition to a decarbonized paradigm is one of the main challenges society faces today. The development of renewable energies is not only seen as a way to mitigate climate change but also as a form to move toward more distributed energy sources, to decrease energy dependency and to increase employment and rural development. While renewable energies represent an opportunity for stimulating economic growth in rural communities, their development benefits are not automatic. In this context, wind power is of special interest. Wind power plants, recognized to be one of the most environmentally friendly sources of power generation, are often constructed in rural areas. In Europe, Spain is the second country in terms of installed wind capacity after Germany. This project aims at providing a clear causal identification of the effects derived from wind farm development in Spain at the local level in terms of population growth, employment and municipality finances. Furthermore, it moves beyond the default variables explored in the literature by analyzing the pre-distributive effects of such infrastructures in terms of locally provided public services. The identification strategy exploits the variation in the installation of wind farms at the municipality level over time. Furthermore, wind potential at the municipality level is considered to be random and exogenous to the initial path of its local development. We exploit this difference in wind potential to prove the robustness of the estimates. Wind farms present potential positive impacts in terms of employment and economic promotion, nevertheless, the displacement of alternative land uses, the negative visual and noise impacts, as well as the perception of wind as a common good, are reasons behind the demand for local communities for compensation. Regardless of the substantial development of the sector and the relevance of its potential socio-economic influence, there is still very limited causal evidence of its effects.

Zhen Li (p), Shuwen Niu

Claudia Serra-Sala

To reveal the futures, trends and main drivers of rural energy transition has an important implication for building up a clean, efficient and sustainable energy system. Based on the physical energy consumption, we measured the effective energy consumption and established a provincial panel data of rural China from 1990 to 2017. The results show that the energy transition is not only reflected in the growth of fuel consumption and the change of fuel structure, especially the growth of high-quality energy, the diversification of service functions and the convenience of use. The term of effective energy can more accurately measure the level of energy consumption per capita than that of the physical energy. The income per capita, urbanization level and annual average temperature are three main factors of impact on energy consumption. For every 1,000 yuan growth in per capita income will increase the consumption of 6 kgce physical energy and 4 kgce effective energy, respectively. Every 1% rise in the urbanization rate of the population can bring a growth of 4.86 kgce physical energy and 1.83 kgce effective energy. 1℃ of rise in average temperature may decreases by 22.3 kgce physical energy and 2.8 kgce effective energy. There are roughly three levels of transition, the slow transition in the northeast, the forefront transition in the eastern coastal areas and the intermediate level transition in vast central and western regions. Focus should be on increasing the share of renewable energy, improving energy infrastructure and energy efficiency in the future.

Vanessa Avanci (p), André Furtado, Alysson Mazoni

Zhen Li

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