Disenabling fossil energy production in Civitavecchia

A powerful and widespread bloc of vested interest that resists the exit from fossil fuels and defends the current fossil centric world-system concurs substantially to obstruct sustainability transitions. This article assumes that to ‘phase in’ these transitions it is first necessary to ‘phase out’ such bloc., i.e. to disenable the ‘fossil machine’, the novel analytical and descriptive category proposed and framed to investigate the ‘phase out’ side of sustainability transitions. The article analyses the disenablement of the fossil machine of fossil energy plants in Civitavecchia – the long-standing ‘fossil energy’ city close to Rome, Italy – whose planned coal to gas conversion was recently abandoned. To this end, besides the concept of fossil machine, the article specifies the notions and potential of ‘destabilisation’ and ‘disruption’ and use them to examine how multiple agents disenabled the fossil machine under scrutiny. It then goes on to frame the practices of destabilisation and disruption occurred in Civitavecchia within a broad societal framework articulated in ‘axes of disenablement’ and concludes by putting forward lessons and ways forward to disenable the fossil machines.