Parliamentary and press discourses on sustainable energy in Italy: No more hard paths, not yet soft paths

This article examines the way hard and soft energy paths are discussed by policy makers, key informants and the press in Italy. Adopting a psycho-social and constructivist perspective, we explored what representations of energy and users, and what technologies are associated with centralised and decentralised energy systems. A large textual corpus was gathered from the online archives of the Chamber of Deputies, using as search criteria the Italian keywords energ* and/or sostenibil* [sustainab*] for the period 2009–2012. Selected corpora (N = 143 parliamentary debates and N = 841 newspaper articles) were submitted to content analysis. Results show that contents related to hard paths prevail over those typical of soft paths. However, while the contents expressed by the press fit with the hard/soft path dichotomy, political discourse is largely polyphasic and mixes elements of the two systems. These traces of incoherence suggest that energy transition is far from being completed and that sustainable energy is still a contended object of representation.