In the fight against global warming and pollution, an energy transformation is needed, and Italy lags behind the other Western European countries. But in many areas, switching from fossil energy sources to renewables is an alternative to uncontrolled business, with devastating effects on the environment and communities.

Sardinia is one of the territories most affected by the strong wave of wind and photovoltaic plants. In recent months, assemblies and marches are being organised against this measure. More and more mayors, citizens and commissions are protesting the "energy speculation" in the Basque Country.

Despite the fact that the media and the major Italian environmental associations, related to the centre-left parties, denounce that they are defending coal and methane, the committees are not against the use of the sun and wind, but require that energy transformations do not become industrial landscapes of Sardinia and demand that citizens decide according to their needs. In short, energy conversion should be favourable to ecological reconversion and not an obstacle.

On the contrary, "in 2022 the Draghi government imposed a total liberalization of the energy market by unleashing speculation", explained El Salto Antonio Muscas, member of the Commission Su Entu Nostu. According to the legislation, all energy production plants are considered "zones of strategic national interest", leaving the municipalities out of any decision and giving great power to private companies, often multinational ones.

In Sardinia, there are currently 824 applications for authorisation for as many other solar and wind plants with a capacity of 57 gigas watts. This is one seventh of the total presented in Italy, although the island has only 1.5 million inhabitants of the 60 million inhabitants of the Italian State.

"It's a huge amount. In Sardinia, renewable sources currently produce more than 2 gigas of watt, although they can generate up to 5 gigas of watt. Sardine produces 40% more electricity than it consumes, so production does not need to increase,” said Muscas at a press conference.

Although it is true that Sardinia currently produces only 34% of its energy from renewable sources and the remaining 66% from fossil fuels, with the exception of an excess of 40% of the share produced from traditional sources, which is exported to the rest of the Italian State, Sardinia would quickly achieve the EU’s 2030 targets.

"Wind farms continue to receive public subsidies, but they have to be disconnected from the grid, because in Sardinia too much energy is produced compared to storage and transport capacity. It makes no sense to multiply the current installed power by once! For this reason, we denounce the speculative nature of the operation, which is often dedicated to enriching private companies created exclusively to attract public subsidies, without any benefit to the citizens," explained Muscas.

Besides being useless, many of these projects are devastating to the territory: "Plants would occupy tens of thousands of hectares, some of which threaten our historical and archaeological heritage. Many of the photovoltaic plants are also being built on agricultural soil," he said.

At the end of April, for example, Chint, the largest photovoltaic panel factory in China, bought over 1,000 hectares of land from Enersid in northern Sardinia to build the largest wind farm in Europe.

More committees are still being established and coordinated at the local level. They call for the suspension of all permits granted to date. "We need time to make an energy plan that takes into account the real energy needs of the territory and that avoids the indiscriminate and harmful use of renewable sources," said the 54-year-old engineer Muscas.

The right-wing parties, which ruled Sardinia until February, took care not to notify the moratorium, although they are now trying to orchestrate the protests. The new centre-left administration, for its part, voted in early July in favour of the plant being shut down for 18 months. But the measure does not satisfy the committees, as Muscas explains: "Unfortunately, the President of Sardinia, Alessandra Tod, who promised to freeze all the projects during the election campaign, after adopting a partial, inadequate and probably ineffective protection law, has withdrawn. The protest reproaches the Italian Government, rather than putting more pressure on the manipulated business sector, on the citizens and on the committees. The approved projects have not been blocked, and many works have also been launched, so the projects have accelerated."

The law of the area only affects plants to be built on land, leaving the door open to the wind towers of the sea, which endanger the fishing and survival of the fauna. "The zone has accepted the minimum renewable energy limit to be set in Sardinia of 6.2 gigawatts, set without any criteria, and the 800 projects presented in this way will be viable and future", concluded the committee representative.

Protests on the rise

In recent weeks, protests have intensified and become more demanding. For several weeks now, the port of Oristano has been occupied by hundreds of people who try every night to block or at least delay the passage of the large wind turbines, sitting on the ground or simply walking very slowly in front of the trucks. The National Police has not responded adequately to the mobilization, and has already charged 16 people for various crimes, and on the night of 15 to 16 July it intervened decisively against peaceful demonstrators.

Wind turbines are so large that they have to be divided into several parts for transport. They are fiber towers, up to 240 meters high, which must be anchored in a metallic base, and concrete, of almost 1,000 cubic meters, with a depth and width of tens of meters for its implantation in the soil. When the towers are not useful, in 25 or 30 years, these underground "buildings" will be abandoned on the ground. To allow the passage of vehicles carrying towers, which may be more than 18 metres in diameter, so far sections of roads and bridges have been destroyed and hundreds of trees have been cut off.

Commissions and citizens are concerned about the influence of these giants on the landscape and the archaeological heritage of the island, so many of the demonstrations that have taken place in recent weeks have revolved around symbolic monuments threatened by wind towers, such as the Basilica of Saccargia (XII). 15th century Romanesque church, near Sassari) or around some nuraghe (a. Megalithic buildings built in the 2nd millennium).

Fourth colonization

Many of the citizens participating in the protest have denounced that today's is the "fourth colonization" of the island. Sardinia was conquered by the Piedmont in 1720 and from that moment began a strong process of linguistic and cultural assimilation that continued with the formation of the Italian State. A third of the forest in Sardinia was cut in a few years to build sleepers on the Italian railways, while the island has a 19th-century railway system. Subsequently, in the name of "development", in the 1960s and 1970s, it was filled with polluting and harmful industries that, in many areas, continue to cause thousands of deaths from cancer and other diseases. Finally, Sardinia was chosen to test its weapons and to train the armies of Italy and NATO, including 60% of the military bases and polygons in Italy.

Data on the production of energy from renewable sources in the Italian regions show the strategic commitment of governments and multinationals to focus on the south and the islands: Apulia is led by 5.4 gigantic hours of energy, followed by Campania and Sicily, with 3.3, and Sardinia, with 1.7. The regions of northern Italy, on the contrary, consume much more energy than they produce and are at the end of the classification, with ridiculous percentages.

As the protests flourish, a new commission has been set up in recent days to gather tens of thousands of signatures and hold a referendum – just for consultation – in which the Sardinians can give their opinion.