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In a multivariate setting, we document that renewable energy generation has a positive impact on economic growth at the regional level in Italy. We do so by adopting panel data unitroot and cointegration tests as well as Granger non-causality tests relying on the system GMM estimator. Our results are interpreted in three ways. Renewable energy generation alleviates balance-of-payments constraints and reduces the exposure of a regional economy to the volatility of the price of fossil fuels and to negative environmental and health externalities deriving from non-renewable energy generation. Therefore, our evidence supports policies promoting renewable energy generation.

This article seeks to make an original contribution to the study of environmental conflicts on waste management infrastructures by applying concepts derived from actor-network theory in an empirical case study. The article is organized into three main parts. The first highlights how the bulk of the literature on the subject has systematically ignored the role of natural/material factors. The second part analyzes the theoretical and methodological contribution of actor-network theory to the analysis of environmental conflicts. Finally, the third part focuses on a case study from northern Italy concerning a conflict over a project for a large-scale municipal waste-toenergy incinerator. The author shows how the outcome of the conflict, namely the failure of the project notwithstanding a convergence of powerful interests, can only be fully understood by adopting a relational definition of agency that sees it as the effect of the process of building associations between humans and nonhumans.

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