Sardinia rebels against energy speculation:no to new photovoltaic parks

The regional council of Sardinia, chaired by the new governor Alessandra Todde, approved on Monday the bill "Urgent measures for the protection of the landscape, landscape and environmental assets", which introduces a ban on the construction of new energy production and storage plants electricity from renewable sources which directly cause new land occupation for 18 months.In fact, the text specifies that article 9 of the Constitution provides that the Republic, and therefore also the Regions, are called upon to work towards ensuring the safeguarding and protection of the environment and landscape.For years, citizens and networks of Sardinian associations have been mobilizing against the multinationals' assault on the island's territory, whose municipalities have been flooded by authorization requests for the construction of wind turbines and new photovoltaic systems.A battle which, in recent weeks, has begun to intensify again, with an influx of petitions and initiatives in the area.

Specifically, the text of the bill establishes the ban on building new electricity production plants from renewable sources "subject to a concession or authorization not yet granted or authorised, or in the event that, at the time of approval of the bill, the authorization or concession procedures are still in progress".It comes within the resolution written in black and white how the "urgency" of the bill lies "precisely in the mandatory need, for the Sardinia Region, to be able to plan the use and consumption of the land", with the aim of "avoiding the irreversibility of potential impacts deriving from the installation, construction, construction or start-up of new or additional electricity production plants from renewable sources".Excluded from the moratorium are "electricity production plants from renewable sources aimed at self-consumption", and "those included in energy communities".

«There is no punitive intent towards the ecological transition which, I remember, must take place – ha declared the president of the Sardinia Region Alessandra Todde -.The question is that we have to decide about our territory, where to build the systems, where to place them and how these systems must be useful with respect to the regional energy plan".«We have a consumption of 1.5 gigawatts per year;the Tyrrhenian Link carries 3 and we have requests for more than 58 gigawatts, so the issue is truly worrying.This is an outsized occupation – explained the governor -.Therefore, we obviously want to respect European standards, we want to place ourselves in the context in which these plants must serve industry and citizens".The measure will have to be examined by the Regional Council.Meanwhile, the council has already announced that it intends to modify the regional landscape plan in order to delimit the areas suitable for the construction of the systems.According to Todde there is in fact «a far west with a regulatory void", also a consequence of the "inertia of the Region" in recent years.The association for the protection of the environment and the historical and artistic heritage Italia Nostra Sardegna, which applauded the approval of the resolution, defined «an encouraging sign and a decisive turning point compared to the inertia demonstrated so far by the island's politics» to stem «the aggression that is covering the whole of Sardinia and its sea of ​​devastating electricity production plants», asking «the involvement of communities, committees and associations", or "that civil society hitherto excluded from decision-making processes and left on the margins of active politics" for the "completion of the Regional Landscape Plan for the internal areas".

Meanwhile, while in the last days it is emerged that the largest photovoltaic panel factory in the People's Republic of China, Chint, has acquired the most important solar project ever conceived at a European level from the Spanish company Enersid, stretching its tentacles across a thousand hectares of land in northern Sardinia, associations and committees they continue to mobilize.The latest initiatives to be announced are two popular assemblies to discuss the threats looming over the Sardinian territory:the first, organized by A Foras Nodo territoriale Centro Sardegna, was fixed at 6pm tomorrow, Saturday 4 May, at Piazza Su Cuzone a Nuoro;the second it will go taking place on Sunday 5 May at 10am at the Abarossa beach Oristano, while in the afternoon an inspection will take place in the city's port, where dozens of wind turbines have been unloaded for days.

On 29 April, a petition entitled "Yes to renewable energy, no to energy speculation!" was also launched, in which underlines how it is sacrosanct to choose the path of abandoning traditional fossil sources of energy production, but that this must not lead, also on the basis of the incentives of the PNRR, to "a disastrous energy speculation to the detriment of the environment, the landscape, the agricultural soils, the local economic-social contexts, the very historical-cultural identity of many places in Italy, as unfortunately is happening in recent times".For this reason, believing that it should be the State that outlines the suitable areas in which to install the systems and puts the identified sites out for tender "after involving the Regions and local authorities and carrying out the strategic environmental assessment procedures", we ask the government directly that "a national moratorium measure which suspends any authorization for new energy production plants from renewable sources" pending a "necessary shared planning".

[by Stefano Baudino]