Reshaping energy landscape: a regional approach to explore electricity infrastructure networks

Reconfiguring energy infrastructure networks to accommodate the expansion of renewable energy can have specific regional manifestations with regional advocacy being used to promote innovations and solutions on the ground. The paper introduces the analytical concept of territorial responsiveness to unpack these regional manifestations. The paper tests a number of constituent properties of territorial responsiveness in two Italian regions, Apulia and Sardinia. These regions show that while the regional level has had a modest influence in the regulation of network infrastructure, regional actors played a role in rendering their territory, directly or indirectly, available for infrastructural investment and mediated potential constraints, both material/infrastructural and constitutional. The paper argues that the concept of territorial responsiveness can add to energy landscape research as it contributes towards understanding the territorial restructuring of agency, unpacking the relations and participation in infrastructure renewals that are emerging around infrastructure change, often with varying spatial reach.