Rage against the fossil machine: The deactivation of fossil energy production in Italy

The ‘fossil machine’ is the powerful and widespread network that supports fossil fuels and obstructs their phase-out. This article assumes that in order to advance the decarbonisation of fossil-based socio-economic systems it is first necessary to ‘deactivate’ the related fossil machine: to investigate how to do so we propose a new reticular approach. The article adopts this approach to investigate the deactivation of the 2019–2022 fossil machine built around a group of coal plants in Civitavecchia – the long-standing fossil energy city close to Rome, Italy – whose planned conversion to gas was eventually abandoned. The article explains the descriptive and analytical role of the reticular approach to the fossil machine. It then uses it descriptively to present, frame, and discuss the practices of destabilisation and disruption and the agents of transition that carried out these practices to deactivate Civitavecchia's fossil machine. It concludes by reflecting on the potential of the reticular approach.