The construction of the CER in a participatory way with the Conscious Contracts method. The case of the Municipality of Povegliano Veronese

Abstract

Is it possible to establish a Renewable Energy Community (CER) in a truly participatory way? How to involve citizens and public and private stakeholders in a process that sees them as protagonists and not just users of the constitutive process and the writing of the statute? These are crucial questions for a nascent CER, since they can orient it towards a horizontal dimension of organization, generating relationships of co-responsibility, or, on the contrary, towards (usual) top-down logics. A tool that allows people to actively involve in the construction of CERs and to obtain the social benefits required by law is that of Conscious Contracts for the creation of conscious agreements. In the article we describe how the Municipality of Povegliano Veronese, in the province of Verona, Italy, promoted a participatory process to establish a CER in its territory with the Conscious Contracts method.