  The Casimir effect for a massless scalar field with Dirichlet and periodic
boundary conditions (b.c.) on infinite parallel plates is revisited in the
local quantum field theory (lqft) framework introduced by B.Kay. The model
displays a number of more realistic features than the ones he treated. In
addition to local observables, as the energy density, we propose to consider
intensive variables, such as the energy per unit area $\epsilon$, as
fundamental observables. Adopting this view, lqft rejects Dirichlet (the same
result may be proved for Neumann or mixed) b.c., and accepts periodic b.c.: in
the former case $\epsilon$ diverges, in the latter it is finite, as is shown by
an expression for the local energy density obtained from lqft through the use
of the Poisson summation formula. Another way to see this uses methods from the
Euler summation formula: in the proof of regularization independence of the
energy per unit area, a regularization-dependent surface term arises upon use
of Dirichlet b.c. but not periodic b.c.. For the conformally invariant scalar
quantum field, this surface term is absent, due to the condition of zero trace
of the energy momentum tensor, as remarked by B.De Witt. The latter property
does not hold in tha application to the dark energy problem in Cosmology, in
which we argue that periodic b.c. might play a distinguished role.
