Energy and the puzzle of Italy’s economic growth

Even though energy has played a pivotal role in shaping the pattern of Italian economic development, it has long been neglected and has only recently begun to attract the attention of historians of the Italian economy. We still lack a global diachronic analysis linking energy, growth and environment endowments, and while the present contribution does not aspire to offer a complete treatment of such a complex question it does attempt to summarize the main outlines of Italy's economic growth and to offer some preliminary answers to the question of in what ways have the scarcity of raw materials and particularly of primary energy sources, affected Italian economic growth. In answering that question, the article draws on series of quantitative data about the patterns of energy sources and consumption to show how these relate to the main phases of Italian economic growth since unification history. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.