The moratorium on renewables in Sardinia, proposed by the centre-left government of Sardinia led by five-star member Alessandra Todde, is among the last acts of a hostile campaign, which risks slowing down or blocking the transition after the still insufficient recovery of the last two years .
In Italy there is a transversal gas and oil party. This fossil line is not only present in Italy: in the United States the Republicans who are trying to block a large wind project in New Jersey, promoted by the Biden administration, are financed by a group of oil companies. As, moreover, the contributions of oil companies to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, whose attacks on renewables are constant, are very high.
Returning to the Sardinian question, with the «Sardegna Rinnovabile» alliance (Greenpeace Legambiente, Kyoto Club and WWF), we reiterated that «the fear of the numerous requests for connection to the network of renewable plants (which do not at all equate to an authorization of the projects ) and the absence of useful criteria for identifying projects in line with the territory and the environment, such as suitable areas, cannot justify a regional moratorium for renewables, an instrument in relation to which the Constitutional Court has already intervened several times, highlighting the frequent cases of constitutional illegitimacy”.
Thus a campaign is waged against windmills and solar panels, which are among the few weapons we can use to free ourselves from fossil fuels in a strategy against the climate crisis.
In conferences against renewables there are those who even defend coal, the most polluting source for the environment and the global climate.
With the Tyrrenian link, the submarine cable that will strengthen electricity connections with the peninsula, the authorization of which must be accelerated, and with a serious development of renewables and storage plants – even these are opposed and are the subject of the moratorium! – Sardinia could finally stop with coal without needing gas and becoming an example of a renewable region. Instead, renewables are blocked but not fossil infrastructures in a region with a very high share of coal.
On a national level, attacking renewables, calling into question choices already made as is done by Minister Lollobrigida, who also tries to block agrivoltaics, or talking nonsense about nuclear power – from fourth generation to fusion – only serves to change the subject, to raise awareness to try to maintain the status quo packaged as the laughable «Mattei Plan». While the “suitable areas” tool is still in the gestation phase.
Fossil gas still accounts for 50% of electricity production, a share that could very well be minimized within a few years with solar and wind power. But reducing the fossil fuel market, including gas, is not good for everyone. Especially those who dominate the gas market and who do not (yet) have a significant role in the transition and are aiming, like Eni, at unreliable options such as CO2 capture and storage (CCS) or phantasmagoric production of biofuels.
It must also be said that there is a widespread “fossil prejudice”: to replace gas, oil and coal – dirty sources but with high energy density – many renewables, clean sources with lower energy density are needed, which are therefore more visible. And some resources, like wind, are available in certain regions and not in others.
Landscape protection, however, can go along with renewables, going beyond the current energy and environment plans of the Region by identifying planning tools, involving the interested territories, as we asked as Renewable Sardinia to the candidates in the regional elections. The new energy landscapes of the transition must therefore be designed, considering them as the “common goods” that they actually are, and involving local communities right from the design stage.
* director of Greenpeace Italy
