Value Creation Through Innovation: Renewable Energy Community

Introduction

Interest in environmental issues and commitment to reducing emissions has grown exponentially in recent years (Jin, 2020). Technological innovation and innovation processes make an extremely important contribution in terms of decarbonization and combating the climate crisis. (Aldieri et al., 2019). The present link between energy and climate change, turns out to be increasingly worrying, complex and difficult to manage and in the last decade much scientific work has been done to analyze climate change policies, internationally (Helm et al., 2009; Giddens, 2011), national (Lisowski, 2002; Harris 2011; Bailey et al., 2012) and local (Bulkeley et al., 2003; Rootes et al., 2012). Many technologies that belong to the sphere of energy transition are emerging technologies that have not yet been able to fully express their potential in terms of value creation. Increasing energy efficiency and enabling a transition from fossil fuels to green is the challenge of the future. In fact, only by changing the sources of energy supply and limiting emissions and consumption will it be possible to avoid a catastrophe on a global scale and in this respect, innovation has become a tool to face the challenges of the current era and promote sustainable development (Horgan et al., 2018). Following the industrial era, the human being has generated enormous amounts of greenhouse gases (anthropogenic greenhouse effect), which comes from the consumption of conventional fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas), from all sources of pollution from intensive agriculture, livestock (methane) and deforestation. Currently the green lungs are suffering from a serious pathology, in fact they cannot perform a function of vital importance, namely the regulation of the climate that took place by absorbing CO2. Malthus, Pigou, Boulding, all have a common denominator, the study of the impact of man on the environment, the incessant growth of the population and the now well-known Malthusian trap, all factors that have occurred centuries later.

Their ability to study the succession of events, despite the very few means available, have allowed them to conduct extraordinary research that is still the subject of careful studies.

Boulding himself states that: “Albeit in a picturesque way I will call the open economy 'cowboy economy'; the cowboy is the symbol of the endless plains, of the tireless, romantic, violent and robbery behavior that is characteristic of open societies. The closed economy of the future will have to resemble the economy of the astronaut: the Earth must be considered a spaceship, in which the availability of anything has a limit, as regards both the possibility of use and the ability to accept waste, and in which therefore it is necessary to behave as in a closed ecological system capable of continuously regenerating materials, using only an external supply of energy”, with the aim of highlighting that the environment should not be seen as an open, infinite system, but a closed system, where resources are available in limited stocks. Later Herman Daly (1973) introduced the concept of steady state. It is considered the pioneer of ecological economics, it affirmed that economic and population growth must be limited and cannot grow indefinitely, as an ever-changing economic growth becomes unsustainable, dangerous and cause of wars. Throughout history, changing lifestyles and increasing well-being have driven the spread of innovation, which can be achieved through the placing on the market of new products and new organizational structures (Schumpeter 1934).