Renewable Energy Communities: Enabling Technologies and Regenerative Models for the Green and Digital Transition in the Inner Areas

This contribution addresses issues of research in Architectural Technology conducted with the laboratory ABITAlab of dArTe-Unirc, with reference to the design of devices for regenerative models based on the tool of “Renewable Energy Communities” in territories subject to marginalization and depopulation phenomena, such as the inner areas of Grecanica Area in Reggio Calabria. The aim is to envisage a transformative path of sustainable development, which can implement “mechanisms of just and equitable transition” at the local level, placing itself within the lines of support and public investment for climate neutrality, such as the Next Generation EU and the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience in Italy. We investigate the key issues of advanced sustainable project, for the design of devices and integrated innovative tools based on solar technologies (PV) for the production, storage and distribution and sharing of energy by communities settled in the inner areas (prosumers), helping to obtain economic and environmental benefits, towards the “climate neutrality”. The model of Energy Communities, using processes of Advanced Regenerative Design, which increase the performance of the system, thanks to the integration of hybrid “zero impact” technologies, become the tool through which to trigger processes of regeneration and new quality of space and life in the inner territories, where there is a greater presence of natural resources (air, water, sun, biomass, etc.) to be used as renewable sources for energy production, but also the possibility to monitor and more easily account for the impacts of a settlement model based on “carbon free” energy production chains, with the reference community settled.