White Coal's Burden: A Social Historical Comparison of alpine Hydro-Extraction between Switzerland and Italy (1918–1945)

• In Event: Renewable Energy? Socio-environmental Consequences of Hydropower Extraction in the Alps

Abstract

Historians have long looked uncritically at the history of hydropower in the Alps. Their focus lay on the economic and infrastructural development that emanated from hydropower plants and thus have developed structurally weak regions. Beyond this narrative, however, social and environmental history also exposes other aspects of Alpine hydroelectricity. The reservoirs and run-of-river power plants extracted water from numerous valleys, appropriated settlement and agricultural land and led to the resettlement and displacement of entire villages. The paper critically examines such aspects of hydropower by describing resettlement practices in Italy and Switzerland. Both countries lacked domestic coal reserves after the First World War, and therefore relied on the extensive development of their Alpine regions' hydroelectric capacities. In democratic Switzerland as well as in fascist Italy, different laws and practices for the construction of reservoirs and resettlements evolved for that purpose. However, both systems were based on unequal power dependencies between centres and peripheries, allowing national energy industries to exploit the resources of the Alpine cantons and provinces. Against this, the riverine communities had only limited options for action. A comparison of the two countries thus reveals not only differences but also similarities between a federal and an authoritarian Alpine state. The paper shows how hydroelectricity irreversibly changed the living climate in the Alps between 1918 and 1945.

Author

• Sebastian De Pretto, University of Bern