Sardinia’s Renewable Vitality Battle: Id At Stake

I’m right here to see three intriguing new power initiatives beneath growth in Sardinia. I’d heard there’s robust public resistance to renewable power, and I wish 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 offers 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 count on was the depth of Sardinians’ mistrust, not simply of journalists, however of any outsider, notably 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 way of 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. Individuals stood in lengthy strains 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 monumental unemployment. There’s a lot of emigration as a result of there are not any jobs. It’s one of many poorest areas in Europe. The world 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 gear. Households are passing down these tales of resistance to their youngsters as a degree of delight. Native media retailers are egging it on, regularly 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 complicated historical past, each current and historical. It’s based mostly on a previous that the Sardinian individuals carry with them—a previous that has seeded a deep sense of suspicion and vulnerability. Resistance, I be taught, 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 a variety of financial causes to do the [energy] transition.” It might entice new corporations reminiscent of information facilities, which might create new jobs, he argues. It might cut back Sardinia’s reliance on imported fuel and gasoline, 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 p.c two years earlier, in line with a USA Right this moment evaluation. In Africa, group 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 mission. And the European Union’s top-down push for renewable power has created opposition in lots of communities.

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

It is a looming drawback for the power transition. Not like massive, centralized coal and nuclear energy crops, renewable power is geographically unfold out, so it touches way more communities. Sardinia provides one of many clearest instances of what can go fallacious 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 dimensions 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 delicate approach of claiming, “We do issues our approach.” Its mountains appear to echo the sentiment. With the very best peaks operating in a series alongside the east aspect of the island, Sardinia resolutely turns its again to the mainland.

At first look, the island appears just like the type of place that’s ripe for an power transition. Its two coal crops 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 fuel. Wind and solar, nevertheless, are plentiful 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 will not be. After I first arrive in Sardinia and soak up its magnificence, I assume that the impetus behind the struggle 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, historical pastures, and idyllic medieval villages, in any case.

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

However the island’s aesthetic—and the tourism trade that depends upon 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 searching for to take advantage of the land. These incursions, and Sardinians’ rebellious responses to them, have turn out to be an integral a part of the island’s identification handed down by way of 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 historical 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 unlimited supply of delight and identification.

Sardinia exported practically 40 p.c 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 identification…particularly within the heart of Sardinia, which was probably the most resistant half,” says Andrea Vargiu, a sociologist on the College of Sassari in Sardinia. “This lengthy historical past of exploitation remains 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 out to be the Kingdom of Italy is seen by many as an act of colonization. It didn’t assist that Italy then proceeded to take advantage of Sardinia’s forests and different assets for the good thing about the mainland—a follow that continued by way of the twentieth century, says Vargiu.

Sardinian bandits generally fought again with their very own sense of justice, settling issues by way of 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 manage the Pratobello 24 motion towards renewable power in Sardinia. Luigi Avantaggiato

Italy’s use of the island for navy functions notably 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 often known as Pratobello. That identify has since turn out to be 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 way of an interpreter. “We imagine that even immediately we’re nonetheless a colony of Italy, and I’m not ashamed to say it despite the fact that I signify an establishment.”

A longstanding mural on one in all 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 Id

Driving across the island and speaking to individuals, I can really feel the load of Sardinia’s historical past—and other people’s propensity for holding onto it. Elaborate heritage festivals happen practically each autumn weekend within the island’s inside. They’re effectively attended, multigenerational affairs that intention to maintain outdated traditions alive. Within the medieval city of Belvì, males roast chestnuts—marroni—over an open fireplace in a frying pan the dimensions 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 constructions, known as nuraghi, which can be just about in all places. 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 complicated towers, every one fastidiously documented on an interactive on-line map. I go to one of many extra intact ones that’s fenced off and requires an admission payment. As I take some video with my cellphone, 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 regularly reminded of the darker aspect of Sardinia’s previous. Individuals typically deliver up painful issues that occurred 50 or 500 years in the past. A center college science trainer named Giannina Serpi, and her husband, Roberto Moro, meet me at a café within the seaside city of Sant’Antioco. After I ask why individuals are so against renewable power, they (like many individuals I interviewed) level to the Nineteen 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 know-how corporations. Petrochemical, aluminum, and different industrial corporations from abroad constructed factories on the island, creating jobs and adjoining companies. However after a couple of many years, financial and geopolitical components led the businesses to shut the factories, sinking native economies and in some instances abandoning poisonous contamination.

Within the northern metropolis of Porto Torres, a number of petrochemical crops, a thermoelectric energy plant, and an industrial harbor employed about 8,000 employees within the early Nineteen Seventies. However the oil crises of that decade took its toll on jobs, and when environmental contamination grew to become evident within the Nineteen Nineties, employment plunged additional. By 2010, a lot of the petrochemical crops had closed. Research present that residents of Porto Torres throughout that point had curiously excessive charges of demise from most cancers, though there isn’t a consensus on the trigger.

Equally, research have discovered increased charges of lead in youngsters within the Portovesme space within the southwest, a few 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 facility close by.

The impacts of those occasions nonetheless really feel contemporary, Serpi explains by way of a digital translator. She says she teaches this historical past to her college students however doesn’t inform them the best way to really feel about it. “I allow them to determine,” she says.

Vitality Colonialism in Sardinia

In opposition to this backdrop, renewable-energy builders within the early 2010s started sizing up Sardinia. They have been drawn by a budget land, low inhabitants, robust 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 largely got here from elsewhere—mainland Italy, Europe, and later, China. The best way many Sardinians noticed it, the brand new crops didn’t deliver many long-lasting jobs. A lot of the work ended after the design and set up phases, and earnings went again to the businesses’ headquarters outdoors of Sardinia, they argued. Individuals known as it “power colonialism” and lauded landowners who refused to promote or lease their property to builders.

Pink granite known as Ghiandone Limbara was extracted from the Sinnada quarry in northern Sardinia from the late Nineteen 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 enable 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 more cash than he’s seen in his life,” says Sotgiu. The cash might have lined his three children’ faculty training, 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 revenue within the fingers of an outsider. “In case you deprive a area of any type of financial system that’s self-reliant, then it’s actually fragile,” says Sotgiu. Her uncle didn’t belief that the revenue would final, and fearful he’d be left with a ruined farm, she says. Plus, his farm has been within the household for generations and one in all his sons is taken with persevering with the enterprise. “So I perceive his delight in saying, ‘No, that is my farm, I don’t care concerning the cash,’” she says.

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

Regardless of that type of grassroots resistance, growth 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, known as the Tyrrhenian Hyperlink, will enhance electrical energy alternate between the areas, bolster grid reliability, and assist grid operators effectively use extra renewable power.

Sardinian activists, nevertheless, view the cable as a approach to justify much more development of wind and photo voltaic crops, and to export the island’s power for the good thing about non-Sardinians. The island already exports about 40 p.c 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 advised 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 corporations outdoors of Sardinia.

The southern newspaper L’Unione Sarda ran wild with the numbers. Nearly every day, for months, it printed tales concerning 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 bit dishonest, as I noticed it, as a result of they stored exaggerating and scaring individuals into considering that we have 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 entails allowing and authorized evaluation and infrequently ends in withdrawn or downsized initiatives. Submitting a request is cheap, and builders typically forged a large internet by getting into a lot of these queues globally to extend the chances of being accepted. In the long run, 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. However it’s tough with technical info. And the newspaper communication is so unhealthy, and its affect is so robust in the neighborhood, that it’s very tough to vary individuals’s minds,” he says.

Pratobello 2024 and Anti-Wind Protests

And so the collective angst brought on by 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 group 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 all the things.”

In a nod to the 1969 resistance in Orgosolo, they dubbed the motion “Pratobello 2024.” Activist teams, known 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 fireplace to grid and development gear.

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

Celebrities obtained concerned. Italian actress and Bond Lady 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 fashionable TV host Geppi Cucciari learn an impassioned lament concerning the exploitation of the island.

Sardinian creator Erre Push penned a graphic novel titled Fàula Birdi a few 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 chargeable 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 up to now—to not assist Sardinians however to assist exterior individuals like trade managers or founders of corporations,” he advised me by way of an interpreter.

Involved concerning 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 regulation that imposed an 18-month ban on development of wind and photo voltaic initiatives inside 7 km of a nuraghe or different archeological web site. It wasn’t a complete ban, but it surely would possibly as effectively have been. “In case you put a circle with a 7-km radius round every archeological web site, you cowl all of Sardinia,” says Emilio Ghiani, an influence programs skilled on the College of Cagliari. “On this approach, 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 p.c completion, which the brand new regulation 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 regulation in Italy’s Constitutional Courtroom, and in January this yr it prevailed. In its determination, the court docket rejected the regulation, saying that renewable-energy initiatives ought to be evaluated case by case.

Venture growth rapidly resumed. So did the backlash. A headline in L’Unione Sarda declared: “Sufficient With Prime-Down Choices With out Consulting Communities.”

Sardinia’s Renewable Vitality 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 programs to make the most of waste warmth for effectivity. However for probably the most half, the public isn’t budging in its resistance. Researchers are attempting to dispel inaccurate info, however regional newspapers appear bent on perpetuating worry.

Plus, there are technical points to work out earlier than a full-scale power transition may be made. Sardinia’s transmission system was constructed across the centralized technology of two coal crops; it wasn’t made for the distributed technology of wind and photo voltaic crops. 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 obtained 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 technology slows in Sardinia, for instance, electrical energy from the mainland can fill within the hole, and vice versa. “It would enhance the reliability of the system, and after it’s put in, will probably be potential to modify off the outdated technology crops 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 beneath sea stage, in line with Terna.

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

The hyperlink is likely one of the most revolutionary high-voltage direct present (HVDC) initiatives in Europe. It could possibly transfer as much as a gigawatt of energy and reverse that energy circulate practically instantaneously. Through the use of voltage supply converter (VSC) know-how, it might probably additionally assist stop 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 might probably assist restore the grid with out counting on an exterior electrical community. These options are notably useful for an remoted community like Sardinia’s.

Italy has created new incentives and laws 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.

Vitality specialists 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 Vitality Storage

One thing extra accessible that the general public can get behind is constructing renewables on Sardinia’s deserted industrial websites. “To be sincere, not all the things is so lovely right here. Now we have a variety of industrial areas the place you may place PV panels. Now we have a variety of rooftops,” electrical engineer Pilo says. “Now we have unused coal mines.” I go to one such mission 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 become a knowledge heart and a pumped-hydro power storage system.

The plan is to maneuver water by way of the mine’s vertical geometry by way of an enclosed membrane—like a delicate pipe—and use the circulate 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 will probably be constructed each above and beneath floor, together with within the mine’s largest chambers practically 500 meters beneath the Earth’s floor.

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

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

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 forestall explosions and leaks. Carbosulcis managers figured that in the event that they’re going to proceed placing cash and personnel into the mine, they may as effectively do one thing helpful with it, Luca Manzella, vp for Europe, Center East, and Africa at Vitality Vault, says as he and I tour the mine.

An revolutionary mission in Sardinia’s inside—Vitality Dome’s grid-scale carbon dioxide battery—appears to be avoiding protest as effectively. In-built a gated industrial complicated close to Ottana, this energy-storage facility appears like an enormous bubble—the sort that matches over a stadium or tennis complicated. It’s stuffed 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 encompassing hillside villages, and though the developer is headquartered on the mainland, there’s little signal of public pushback.

Vitality 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 technology. Dozens of those communities are already energetic on the island, in line with the Sardinian Electrical energy Affiliation, a gaggle that gives steerage to shoppers.

However by far the best want is for power builders and authorities to know the individuals and the historical past of the land on which they wish to construct. “When Europe or the nationwide authorities make a regulation, they should additionally think about the background of Sardinian individuals and why they’re so afraid,” says Simone Micheletti, CEO at Futura Group, a renewable-energy developer based mostly in Serramanna, Sardinia. “You can’t apply the identical regulation to Sweden and Sicily. Typically it is advisable to perceive [the situation] domestically,” he says.

Choice makers in all places could be smart to hear. In any other case, they might undergo 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.