The project "Intergenerational Justice and Ethical Sustainability in the context of development of the electrical grid (GIUSTINT)" aims to continue and expand a scientific collaboration between the Research Area in Public Ethics and RSE s.p.a., initially started with the project named “The different aspects of the concept of justice in the planning phases of electrical infrastructures (GIUSTEL)”.

The new project intends to continue the previous one developing it along four different but structurally coordinated directions, hereafter identified in synthetic form.

Particular attention will be given first to the theme of intergenerational justice. In this first research strand, we will focus on models and practices of justice between generations, trying to analyse critically how key principles of equality, reciprocity and distribution are contemplable in a fruitful dialogue between present stakeholders and potential future stakeholders, in relation to the development of the grid. Specific attention, in the context of a rapidly evolving international debate on the subject, will be dedicated to the theories of energy justice.

Secondly - as first specific focus of research - the project will investigate the link between justice and vulnerability. Such a nexus wants to recall the entire scope of vulnerability studies, i.e., studies of policies and rights designed for specific vulnerable social groups, i.e. children, disabled, elderly, in order to understand whether there is connection between social vulnerability and "technologically induced" vulnerability, particularly due to the installation of energy transmission lines. It will be looked at possible costs/ damages for specific categories of subjects living in areas surrounding the sites affected by the transmission infrastructure. We intend to research both a theoretical level and case studies, already individuated through the previous GIUSTEL project or identified ad hoc.

The third research strand concerns the transformation of the social imaginary. The purpose is to investigate the altered public perception and usage of the sites affected by the grid infrastructures and the immediate areas close to them, elaborating an analysis that will necessarily intersect physical and geographic data, landscape-based surveys, and surveys of the social perceptions of the space imaginary. The aim of the research will be the creation of indicators that can account for the quality of the interaction between the landscape, people and technology. A secondary aim will be also achieving a tool that can be employed in current or future projects of infrastructure siting, in order to offer further evaluation elements to stakeholders and individuals, (public and private), directly or indirectly involved in them.

Finally yet importantly, the research will investigate the relation between the damage and its "ethical compensation". We aim to investigate the theoretical sustainability of potentially innovative transmission infrastructure damage compensation forms, in alternative to more traditional approaches used to assess costs, such as CBA or LCA, etc. Specifically, we intend to propose forms of compensation and rehabilitation by forms of "damage" real or perceived, present or expected, topical or meta-topical (i.e. bound to a single location or to a plurality of points connected to each other). Particular attention will also be given to the different "monetization" patterns of damage, trying to understand the different ethical implications for the subjects directly affected, and for those only potentially concerned, along an imaginary continuous line of real or perceived damage ranging from a maximum to a minimum level.