Rural-Urban Spaces: New Energy Transition Territories in Argentina

Abstract

The rural-urban spaces are particularly relevant territories for studying the energy transition processes that promote new ways of energy generation, consumption, and management. The heterogeneity of usages that these spaces encompass —productive, extractive, of services, and residential— increase the energy demand and its diversity as well. This work analyses different projects of energy production from renewable sources taken place in rural-urban spaces in Argentina, focusing in distributed generation experiences that intend to satisfy local demands. The re-signification of energy functions deployed in these territories are evaluated in the context of the adoption of more sustainable and diverse ways of energy provisioning. Study cases are presented by means of field works, semi-structured interviews, secondary sources, and thematic cartography, identifying conditions and obstacles of the initiatives’ evolution and the transformations that have influenced the examined rural-urban territories. The analyzed cases show up heterogeneous situations related to the projects’ degree of progress and new challenges for a more decentralized energy management in rural-urban spaces.