Social Tipping Processes in the Transformation of Civitavecchia’s Socio-energy System

The chapter introduces the notion of ‘social tipping processes’, an interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of complex transformation processes which helps to identify the sequence of, broadly understood, socio-political events that can trigger positive or negative dynamics of transformations of current social-ecological systems. Social tipping processes are first framed and delineated, then this category is applied to a spatially and temporally delimited empirical case, the long-standing Italian energy city of Civitavecchia—near Rome—to investigate the transformation to renewables of the local socio-energy systems as a dynamic and relational process. The chapter concludes by outlining the main paths forward for a sustainable future, as advocated by the social tipping processes perspective put into action in the case under scrutiny.