ENERGY MAPPING: a way to territorialize an accidental transition

The current energy crisis has brought attention to the confusing process of the energy transition, which should lead Europe towards a more sustainable energy model. When moving away from the mainstream debate and focusing on a socio-spatial point of view, it becomes evident that energy policies have been conceived within an eco-modern and non-spatial framework, producing an accidental territorialization of the energy systems with critical repercussions. This ‘territorial indifference’ has led to many ‘territorial inertias’: trying to manage this situation, many policies and measures have produced a binding planning system, more able to tell ‘what and where not to do’, rather than adopting a proactive approach allowing the spread of a design culture of transition. A large responsibility of this weakness is the lack of spatial knowledge. Representing energy, its system and the process of transition is quite difficult and so less practised. At the same time the mapping operations are a big challenge to position the vision of transition, to design scenarios and for grasping spatial knowledge for a just and territorialized transition. The paper shows and discusses some spatialization operations of energy systems, and their transition, using the Veneto region as a case study. The cartographies produced are not limited to analytical operations, but also represent possible design tools to regain control in transition processes and starting points to rethink the way we produce, move, and use energy.