Energy transition in Santorso: “This is so obvious!”

Santorso and Valsamoggia, two towns in Italy, took the one year pilot opportunity to boost disruptive initiatives that are now creating a deep positive impact on the ecological and political environment. “Both the Municipality and the civil society organisations know they face limitations when trying to create a real impact in the community and they also know they need each other,” says Giulio Pesenti from Santorso, Italy. In Santorso there was already a link established between the civil society and the municipality before the pilot started, but Giulio recognised the importance of this process to shape a safe space for true collaboration to happen and create meaningful impact on the community. Their main project ‘Salta la Corrente’ is supporting citizens to shift to 100% renewable energy providers, a simple action that can have a big impact in lowering CO2 emissions and contributing to the energy transition.Their goal is to have all residents in the municipality change their contracts to companies that only sell energy from renewable sources. Not only local families have joined the project but the municipality itself: that’s approximately €150,000 of electricity expenditure that now goes to clean and certified energy.
The municipality also supports the ‘Energy Desk’, a place where people can go to get information on renewable energy, more efficient technologies for their homes and now also some help in identifying renewable energy companies.
In partnership with the Energy Desk and Legambiente (a national association on sustainability) many public talks are being organised, where it is explained the challenge of the energy transition, the complexity of its infrastructure and how vital this topic is for our economy and society. At the end, there’s no reason for people to not join “Salta la Corrente”. They always say: “This is so obvious, why nobody told me about this before?”.

More stories to be shared soon.