Sardinia’s Renewable Power Battle: Identification At Stake

I’m right here to see three intriguing new power initiatives beneath improvement in Sardinia. I’d heard there’s sturdy public resistance to renewable power, and I need to perceive why that’s. I inform Pilo, who’s vice rector for innovation on the College of Cagliari, that I hope he’ll share some insights earlier than I head out on a reporting journey throughout the island. (My reply appears to fulfill him, and he kindly provides me an hour of his time).

This gained’t be the primary time that I’m requested to clarify my presence on the island. I’d anticipated it, to some extent; I’m a overseas journalist poking round, in any case.

What I didn’t anticipate was the depth of Sardinians’ mistrust, not simply of journalists, however of any outsider, significantly ones with authority. Over the previous couple of years, builders of wind and photo voltaic initiatives, most of whom aren’t from right here, have been absorbing the majority of this smoldering, communal wariness.

Activists Maria Grazia Demontis [left] and Alberto Sala, photographed contained in the archaeological monument Giants’ Tomb of Pascarédda, have labored to cease the development of wind farms by organizing protests and taking authorized actions by their group Gallura Coordination. Luigi Avantaggiato

The truth is, the resistance is so widespread amongst Sardinians that over the course of two months in 2024, a grassroots petition to ban new wind and photo voltaic initiatives gathered over 210,000 licensed signatures. That’s greater than 1 / 4 of Sardinia’s typical voter turnout and represents a cross-party consensus. Folks stood in lengthy traces in public squares to signal. And it labored: Political leaders responded swiftly with an 18-month moratorium on renewable power development.

“I’ve by no means seen a lot engagement for something” in Sardinia, says Elisa Sotgiu, a literary sociologist on the College of Oxford, who was born and raised on the island. “Sardinia has a bunch of issues like huge unemployment. There’s plenty of emigration as a result of there are not any jobs. It’s one of many poorest areas in Europe. The realm is simply decaying,” she says. “And but the factor individuals are demonstrating towards is renewable power.”

And the opposition continues: A community of mayors has mobilized for the trigger. Hundreds of individuals present up at organized protests. Activists vandalize grid tools. Households are passing down these tales of resistance to their youngsters as some extent of satisfaction. Native media shops are egging it on, often publishing misinformation tinged with fearmongering.

These aren’t simply NIMBY complaints—not within the pejorative sense, no less than. The resistance, and the mistrust underlying it, is rooted within the island’s advanced historical past, each current and historic. It’s primarily based on a previous that the Sardinian individuals carry with them—a previous that has seeded a deep sense of suspicion and vulnerability. Resistance, I study, is a part of what it means to be Sardinian.

Fabrizio Giulio Luca Pilo, vice rector of innovation on the College of Cagliari, has been working to assist Sardinia transition to cleaner, extra dependable power. Luigi Avantaggiato

“It’s a very unhappy state of affairs,” Pilo tells me. “There are quite a lot of financial causes to do the [energy] transition.” It might appeal to new firms akin to information facilities, which might create new jobs, he argues. It might scale back Sardinia’s reliance on imported gasoline and gas, making the island extra impartial. New financial exercise on the island would possibly assist reverse its inhabitants decline, he provides.

And whereas what’s taking place on Sardinia is exclusive, it additionally represents a bigger pattern: A rising variety of communities all over the world are opposing wind- and solar-farm development, to the consternation of stakeholders. By 2025, practically one-fourth of the counties in america had enacted some obstacle to new utility-scale wind and photo voltaic power—up from as few as 15 % two years earlier, in keeping with a USA As we speak evaluation. In Africa, neighborhood pushback efficiently canceled main initiatives such because the 60-megawatt Kinangop Wind Park in Kenya. In India, native pastoralists are difficult the 13-gigawatt Ladakh photo voltaic and wind undertaking. And the European Union’s top-down push for renewable power has created opposition in lots of communities.

Their causes differ—land-use preferences, generational ethos, authorities resentment, property values, financial results, aesthetics—however all of those struggles have this in frequent: The resisters are passionate and they’re usually profitable in blocking improvement.

It is a looming drawback for the power transition. Not like massive, centralized coal and nuclear energy vegetation, renewable power is geographically unfold out, so it touches much more communities. Sardinia affords one of many clearest instances of what can go unsuitable when renewable-energy builders and authorities fail to think about the complexities of the native state of affairs on the bottom.

Why is Sardinia resisting renewable power?

Roughly the scale of New Hampshire, Sardinia juts out of the Mediterranean Sea about 200 kilometers west of Italy’s mainland. Technically it’s a part of Italy, however Sardinians are fast to level out their island’s autonomous standing—a refined means of claiming, “We do issues our means.” Its mountains appear to echo the sentiment. With the very best peaks working in a sequence alongside the east aspect of the island, Sardinia resolutely turns its again to the mainland.

At first look, the island seems just like the type of place that’s ripe for an power transition. Its two coal vegetation are ageing and are focused to be shut down to satisfy local weather commitments. It has no nuclear energy, nor does it produce its personal pure gasoline. Wind and solar, nevertheless, are ample and will simply meet the power wants of Sardinia’s sparse inhabitants of about 1.5 million.

However whereas the assets could also be prepared for a transition, the individuals emphatically aren’t. Once I first arrive in Sardinia and soak up its magnificence, I assume that the impetus behind the combat towards wind and photo voltaic farms boils all the way down to how they appear. Waves of silicon, steel, and concrete would spoil views of Sardinia’s gorgeous seashores, rugged mountains, historic pastures, and idyllic medieval villages, in any case.

Residents of the town of Orgosolo in 1969 famously stopped the development of a navy firing vary on communal grazing land referred to as Pratobello. Its village partitions are nonetheless coated in murals advocating social protest and antiauthoritarianism. Luigi Avantaggiato

However the island’s aesthetic—and the tourism trade that will depend on it—are solely a part of the equation. The far stronger cultural forces at play are rooted in Sardinia’s previous. Over millennia, the island has endured successive invasions from outsiders looking for to use the land. These incursions, and Sardinians’ rebellious responses to them, have turn into an integral a part of the island’s id handed down by generations.

The invasions began with the comparatively peaceable settlement of the Phoenicians within the ninth and eighth centuries B.C.E. Then got here the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Iberians, who conquered with violence, looting, and enslavement. However legend has it that regardless of the would possibly of those historic conquerors, pockets of Sardinia generally managed to defend themselves. “Not even the Roman empire might conquer the shepherds of the highland areas,” is the oft-repeated story. Whether or not that’s true or simply an idealization is irrelevant; such tales function an infinite supply of satisfaction and id.

Sardinia exported practically 40 % of the electrical energy it generated in 2025, largely to Corsica and the Italian mainland by way of two current submarine cables.

The island is “fiercely pleased with its id…particularly within the heart of Sardinia, which was essentially the most resistant half,” says Andrea Vargiu, a sociologist on the College of Sassari in Sardinia. “This lengthy historical past of exploitation continues to be in our DNA, together with a proud sense of autonomy,” he says.

Sardinia’s unification, within the mid-1800s, with what would turn into the Kingdom of Italy is seen by many as an act of colonization. It didn’t assist that Italy then proceeded to use Sardinia’s forests and different assets for the advantage of the mainland—a follow that continued by the twentieth century, says Vargiu.

Sardinian bandits generally fought again with their very own sense of justice, settling issues by raids, kidnappings, and violence. Their tales reside on in Sardinian lore with an nearly legendary high quality, the brigands admired for his or her intractability.

Pasquale Mereu, mayor of Orgosolo, helped set up the Pratobello 24 motion towards renewable power in Sardinia. Luigi Avantaggiato

Italy’s use of the island for navy functions significantly irked locals. In a well-known case in 1969, residents of the city of Orgosolo efficiently thwarted the development of a firing vary on communal grazing land referred to as Pratobello. That identify has since turn into synonymous with the protection of 1’s territory, and a rallying cry.

“Sardinia has all the time been a land of conquest,” says Pasquale Mereu, mayor of Orgosolo, who spoke with IEEE Spectrum by an interpreter. “We consider that even at the moment we’re nonetheless a colony of Italy, and I’m not ashamed to say it though I characterize an establishment.”

A longstanding mural on one in every of his village’s partitions reads: “You might be within the territory of Orgosolo; right here the individuals rule supreme and the federal government obeys.”

Sardinia’s Historical past Shapes its Identification

Driving across the island and speaking to individuals, I can really feel the load of Sardinia’s historical past—and folks’s propensity for holding onto it. Elaborate heritage festivals happen practically each autumn weekend within the island’s inside. They’re nicely attended, multigenerational affairs that goal to maintain previous traditions alive. Within the medieval city of Belvì, males roast chestnuts—marroni—over an open hearth in a frying pan the scale of a swimming pool after which serve them to the group by shoveling them into troughs. They’re scrumptious. In an adjoining amphitheater, the group sways alongside to costumed performers main conventional dances.

Then there are the Bronze Age stone buildings, referred to as nuraghi, which are just about in every single place. Constructed earlier than the violent conquests, these conical towers have come to represent a romanticized imaginative and prescient of the heyday of Sardinia’s independence. Greater than 7,000 of them stay, starting from unremarkable piles of rocks to advanced towers, each rigorously documented on an interactive on-line map. I go to one of many extra intact ones that’s fenced off and requires an admission price. As I take some video with my telephone, an worker asks me who I’m and what I’m doing and informs me I’ll must get permission from the federal government earlier than posting something on-line.

This rock hollowed out by erosion and walled up with stones was doubtless utilized by shepherds as a shelter close to the historic Sardinian village of Tempio Pausania. Luigi Avantaggiato

However in interviews with residents, I’m frequently reminded of the darker aspect of Sardinia’s previous. Folks usually deliver up painful issues that occurred 50 or 500 years in the past. A center college science instructor named Giannina Serpi, and her husband, Roberto Moro, meet me at a café within the seaside city of Sant’Antioco. Once I ask why individuals are so against renewable power, they (like many individuals I interviewed) level to the Seventies.

Sheep return from pasture in Bonorva, Sardinia, close to the Bonorva wind farm operated by EDF Renewables. Luigi Avantaggiato

That decade introduced a brand new type of exploitation: not by empires or governments, however by expertise firms. Petrochemical, aluminum, and different industrial firms from abroad constructed factories on the island, creating jobs and adjoining companies. However after a number of a long time, financial and geopolitical elements led the businesses to shut the factories, sinking native economies and in some instances forsaking poisonous contamination.

Within the northern metropolis of Porto Torres, a number of petrochemical vegetation, a thermoelectric energy plant, and an industrial harbor employed about 8,000 staff within the early Seventies. However the oil crises of that decade took its toll on jobs, and when environmental contamination turned evident within the Nineties, employment plunged additional. By 2010, many of the petrochemical vegetation had closed. Research present that residents of Porto Torres throughout that point had curiously excessive charges of loss of life from most cancers, though there is no such thing as a consensus on the trigger.

Equally, research have discovered increased charges of lead in youngsters within the Portovesme space within the southwest, a couple of 20-minute drive from the place I sit with Serpi and Moro in Sant’Antioco. There, the U.S. aluminum producer Alcoa operated a smelter that employed about 500 individuals and supported an estimated 1,500 adjoining jobs. However the firm shut down the smelter in 2012. Three years earlier, Russian aluminum producer Rusal had idled its Eurallumina manufacturing unit close by.

The impacts of those occasions nonetheless really feel recent, Serpi explains by a digital translator. She says she teaches this historical past to her college students however doesn’t inform them tips on how to really feel about it. “I allow them to resolve,” she says.

Power Colonialism in Sardinia

Towards this backdrop, renewable-energy builders within the early 2010s started sizing up Sardinia. They had been drawn by a budget land, low inhabitants, sturdy wind, and solar that shines a median of about 300 days a yr. EF Solare Italia commissioned an 11-MW photo voltaic plant in 2010. Rome-based Enel Inexperienced Energy started development of a 90-MW wind farm in Portoscuso the next yr.

Different builders adopted, they usually principally got here from elsewhere—mainland Italy, Europe, and later, China. The best way many Sardinians noticed it, the brand new vegetation didn’t deliver many long-lasting jobs. A lot of the work ended after the design and set up phases, and income went again to the businesses’ headquarters outdoors of Sardinia, they argued. Folks referred to as it “power colonialism” and lauded landowners who refused to promote or lease their property to builders.

Pink granite referred to as Ghiandone Limbara was extracted from the Sinnada quarry in northern Sardinia from the late Seventies to 2011. Luigi Avantaggiato

The uncle of Oxford’s Sotgiu is a type of landowners. She says that a few years in the past a photo voltaic firm requested him if he would permit the set up of an array on his household farm in Logudoro in Sardinia’s inside. “From that, he would have gotten one thing round €150,000 a yr, which is extra money than he’s seen in his life,” says Sotgiu. The cash might have coated his three children’ faculty schooling, she says. “However he refused.”

He had many causes. For one, switching from sheep grazing to the extra passive enterprise of leasing land would have put the destiny of his earnings within the palms of an outsider. “In case you deprive a area of any kind of financial system that’s self-reliant, then it’s actually fragile,” says Sotgiu. Her uncle didn’t belief that the earnings would final, and nervous he’d be left with a ruined farm, she says. Plus, his farm has been within the household for generations and one in every of his sons is thinking about persevering with the enterprise. “So I perceive his satisfaction in saying, ‘No, that is my farm, I don’t care in regards to the cash,’” she says.

Sardinia has one of many largest carbon footprints per capita in Europe.

Regardless of that type of grassroots resistance, improvement continued. In 2023, the Italian authorities approved the development of a 1-GW submarine energy cable to attach Sardinia to Sicily and the Italian mainland. When accomplished, the bidirectional cable, referred to as the Tyrrhenian Hyperlink, will enhance electrical energy trade between the areas, bolster grid reliability, and assist grid operators effectively use extra renewable power.

Sardinian activists, nevertheless, view the cable as a solution to justify much more development of wind and photo voltaic vegetation, and to export the island’s power for the advantage of non-Sardinians. The island already exports about 40 % of its electricity, largely to Corsica and the Italian mainland by way of two current submarine cables.

The Florinas wind farm, commissioned in 2004, was one of many earliest wind farms inbuilt Sardinia. Luigi Avantaggiato

After which got here the tipping level. In June 2024, in an effort to satisfy the European Union’s 2030 renewable power targets, Italy dedicated to constructing greater than 80 GW of recent wind and photo voltaic power capability over December 2020 ranges. The nationwide authorities divvied up the burden amongst its areas and instructed Sardinia to construct its portion, 6.2 GW.

The transfer triggered an onslaught of requests from wind and photo voltaic builders wanting to construct initiatives in Sardinia. The queue at one level topped 50 GW of grid-connection requests. That represented greater than 700 photo voltaic and wind initiatives, lots of which got here from firms outdoors of Sardinia.

The southern newspaper L’Unione Sarda ran wild with the numbers. Virtually every day, for months, it printed tales in regards to the “wind assault.” The decision-to-arms posts urged individuals to protest. “The Assault on the Panorama Does Not Cease; The Menace From Agrivoltaics Is Rising,” learn a July 2024 headline. Unsubstantiated articles tried to hyperlink wind and photo voltaic builders to organized crime.

“It was scaremongering,” says Sotgiu. “It was a little bit dishonest, as I noticed it, as a result of they stored exaggerating and scaring individuals into considering that we had been going to be invaded.” (Representatives of the newspaper declined to remark.)

The numbers did scare individuals. Misplaced was the truth that a grid-connection request is simply the beginning of a multiyear course of that includes allowing and authorized assessment and infrequently ends in withdrawn or downsized initiatives. Submitting a request is cheap, and builders usually forged a large internet by coming into plenty of these queues globally to extend the chances of being accepted. Ultimately, solely a fraction come to fruition. In different phrases, constructing all, and even most, of the requested 50 GW was by no means going to occur.

“I attempted to clarify this” to the general public, says an industrial engineer on the College of Cagliari, in Sardinia, who requested to stay nameless to keep away from any detrimental impacts of talking out. “I went to the regional tv station. But it surely’s troublesome with technical info. And the newspaper communication is so unhealthy, and its affect is so sturdy in the neighborhood, that it’s very troublesome to vary individuals’s minds,” he says.

Pratobello 2024 and Anti-Wind Protests

And so the collective angst attributable to highly effective outsiders, trade, and the state united Sardinians right into a singular trigger. Confronted with what felt like one other tried conquest, they did what their households and neighborhood had taught them to do: They resisted. Says Mereu: “That is what we’re rebelling towards: the concept that Sardinians are few and subsequently should put up with every little thing.”

In a nod to the 1969 resistance in Orgosolo, they dubbed the motion “Pratobello 2024.” Activist teams, referred to as “committees,” organized protests, and created social media campaigns and movies. Hundreds of individuals began exhibiting up at deliberate demonstrations. A lawyer went on a starvation strike. Vandals unscrewed bolts on wind turbine blades and set hearth to grid and development tools.

Italy’s transmission system operator, Terna, needed to swap to firm automobiles with out logos to keep away from being focused. College students learning the electrical energy system in a grasp’s program sponsored by Terna had been verbally attacked at an airport, in keeping with a professor at their college who spoke with me in regards to the violence.

Celebrities bought concerned. Italian actress and Bond Woman Caterina Murino met with Sardinia’s president to ask her to reject wind farms. Murino posted on Instagram: “No person contact Sardinia!!!!” On Italian nationwide TV, the jazz legend Paolo Fresu carried out on trumpet whereas standard TV host Geppi Cucciari learn an impassioned lament in regards to the exploitation of the island.

Sardinian writer Erre Push penned a graphic novel titled Fàula Birdi a couple of protagonist who resisted an imposition from outsiders. He wrote it upon the request of the activist group ReCommon, whose mission is to “problem company and state energy liable for the plunder of territories.” Push hopes the ebook will encourage extra individuals to observe the protagonist’s lead. “Renewables are one other imposition like prior to now—to not assist Sardinians however to assist exterior individuals like trade managers or founders of firms,” he instructed me by an interpreter.

Involved in regards to the inflow of photo voltaic and wind farms being inbuilt Sardinia by outsiders, Roberto Pusceddu, beneath his pen identify Erre Push, printed a graphic novel that aimed to encourage younger individuals to withstand such impositions. Luigi Avantaggiato

Mereu and a community of mayors drafted the petition that gathered so many signatures. The individuals had spoken. In response, Sardinian politicians handed a legislation that imposed an 18-month ban on development of wind and photo voltaic initiatives inside 7 km of a nuraghe or different archeological website. It wasn’t a complete ban, nevertheless it would possibly as nicely have been. “In case you put a circle with a 7-km radius round every archeological website, you cowl all of Sardinia,” says Emilio Ghiani, an influence techniques skilled on the College of Cagliari. “On this means, it’s unimaginable to discover a place to put in a brand new plant.”

The transfer was like giving the Italian authorities—and the EU’s clear power targets—the center finger. And it despatched renewable-energy builders scrambling. One firm constructing an agriphotovoltaic plant raced to deliver development to 30 % completion, which the brand new legislation stated was the edge for being allowed to proceed. The corporate requested to not be named on this story to keep away from bother.

Livid, the federal government in Rome challenged the Sardinian regional legislation in Italy’s Constitutional Court docket, and in January this yr it prevailed. In its resolution, the courtroom rejected the legislation, saying that renewable-energy initiatives needs to be evaluated case by case.

Mission improvement shortly resumed. So did the backlash. A headline in L’Unione Sarda declared: “Sufficient With High-Down Selections With out Consulting Communities.”

Sardinia’s Renewable Power Battle

The place the island goes from right here is unclear. There’s a willingness amongst a portion of the inhabitants to maneuver ahead with an power transition. For instance, some of Sardinia’s largest cheese makers are powering their operations with renewable power and putting in techniques to make the most of waste warmth for effectivity. However for essentially the most half, the public isn’t budging in its resistance. Researchers try to dispel inaccurate info, however regional newspapers appear bent on perpetuating concern.

Plus, there are technical points to work out earlier than a full-scale power transition will be made. Sardinia’s transmission system was constructed across the centralized era of two coal vegetation; it wasn’t made for the distributed era of wind and photo voltaic vegetation. Renewables require a extra dynamic grid, extra power storage, and a wider vary of energy sources to compensate for his or her intermittency. Engineers are engaged on it, however they’ve bought a methods to go.

The brand new Tyrrhenian Hyperlink undersea energy cable will assist with that. By connecting Sardinia, Sicily, and the mainland, the cable creates extra flexibility within the system. When wind or photo voltaic era slows in Sardinia, for instance, electrical energy from the mainland can fill within the hole, and vice versa. “It should enhance the reliability of the system, and after it’s put in, it will likely be doable to change off the previous era vegetation that use coal,” says Ghiani. In January, Terna completed laying the western part of the cable between Sardinia and Sicily, and in April it accomplished the jap part between Sicily and Campania on the mainland. Doing so set a world report for energy cable depth, at 2,150 meters under sea stage, in keeping with Terna.

Italy initially ordered Sardinia’s two coal vegetation to close down by 2025 however later prolonged the deadline to 2038.

The hyperlink is without doubt one of the most modern high-voltage direct present (HVDC) initiatives in Europe. It could transfer as much as a gigawatt of energy and reverse that energy movement practically instantaneously. Through the use of voltage supply converter (VSC) expertise, it will probably additionally assist forestall power-flow issues by regulating frequency and smoothing out oscillations within the grid in actual time. And it has black-start functionality: Within the occasion of a shutdown, it will probably assist restore the grid with out counting on an exterior electrical community. These options are significantly useful for an remoted community like Sardinia’s.

Italy has created new incentives and rules to construct a marketplace for grid-scale power storage. Having loads of storage is a key to scaling up renewables as a result of it supplies backup energy when the wind isn’t blowing or the solar isn’t shining. To this finish, Italy created MACSE, an public sale that offers storage builders income certainty. Its identify interprets to mechanism for the procurement of electrical energy storage capability. The primary public sale spherical, in September, efficiently awarded 10 GWh.

Power consultants in Sardinia are additionally working with policymakers to vary the foundations round grid-connection requests. However these sorts of nerdy particulars don’t grace most family conversations.

Industrial Websites Host Power Storage

One thing extra accessible that the general public can get behind is constructing renewables on Sardinia’s deserted industrial websites. “To be trustworthy, not every little thing is so stunning right here. We’ve got quite a lot of industrial areas the place you may place PV panels. We’ve got quite a lot of rooftops,” electrical engineer Pilo says. “We’ve got unused coal mines.” I go to one such undertaking that’s continuing with native assist—or no less than with out a lot opposition. It’s a coal mine close to Gonnesa that shut down in 2018 and is now being changed into a knowledge heart and a pumped-hydro power storage system.

The plan is to maneuver water by the mine’s vertical geometry by way of an enclosed membrane—like a tender pipe—and use the movement to show a turbine that generates electrical energy. The water then will get pumped again to the floor and saved in pear-shaped vessels above floor. The scheme will assist energy the info heart, which shall be constructed each above and under floor, together with within the mine’s largest chambers practically 500 meters under the Earth’s floor.

Power Vault will take away previous mining tools from the Carbosulcis coal mine close to Gonnesa to make means for an underground information heart [above]. It will likely be powered by a pumped-hydro power storage system that flows by the mine’s vertical geometry and shops water in above-ground tanks [top].Luigi Avantaggiato

Power storage developer Power Vault is constructing it, and regardless of being primarily based in Lugano, Switzerland—that’s, not Sardinia—the corporate appears to have prevented protest. It helps that the mine is owned by Carbosulcis, a Sardinian regional-government-owned firm, which is looking the photographs on the undertaking.

Plus, doing nothing with the mine prices cash. The mine closed eight years in the past as a result of it wasn’t worthwhile, however Carbosulcis should proceed sustaining it due to its excessive methane emissions, which require monitoring and air flow to stop explosions and leaks. Carbosulcis managers figured that in the event that they’re going to proceed placing cash and personnel into the mine, they could as nicely do one thing helpful with it, Luca Manzella, vice chairman for Europe, Center East, and Africa at Power Vault, says as he and I tour the mine.

An modern undertaking in Sardinia’s inside—Power Dome’s grid-scale carbon dioxide battery—appears to be avoiding protest as nicely. In-built a gated industrial advanced close to Ottana, this energy-storage facility seems like a large bubble—the type that matches over a stadium or tennis advanced. It’s crammed with carbon dioxide that’s compressed to retailer 200 MWh of electrical energy for the grid. Though the bubble is seen from a number of of the encircling hillside villages, and though the developer is headquartered on the mainland, there’s little signal of public pushback.

Power Dome started working its 20-megawatt, long-duration energy-storage facility in July 2025 in Ottana, Sardinia. In partnership with Google, the corporate this yr goals to construct replicas of the system on a number of continents.Luigi Avantaggiato

One other path ahead is thru “power communities.” On this grassroots method, shoppers work collectively to construct their very own photo voltaic plant or different energy era. Dozens of those communities are already lively on the island, in keeping with the Sardinian Electrical energy Affiliation, a bunch that gives steerage to shoppers.

However by far the best want is for power builders and authorities to grasp the individuals and the historical past of the land on which they need to construct. “When Europe or the nationwide authorities make a legislation, they must additionally contemplate the background of Sardinian individuals and why they’re so afraid,” says Simone Micheletti, CEO at Futura Group, a renewable-energy developer primarily based in Serramanna, Sardinia. “You can not apply the identical legislation to Sweden and Sicily. Generally you want to perceive [the situation] domestically,” he says.

Determination makers in every single place could be sensible to pay attention. In any other case, they could endure the identical destiny as their counterparts in Sardinia: despised by locals, delayed by politics, and shocked at how badly all of it went.

Particular because of Luigi Avantaggiato for decoding and extra reporting.