Energy, Sardinia can produce and distribute it

Energetic silence

In the final constituent debate, however, there is no trace, not even a word or a feeble hiss from the Government, on the content of the letter "e" of article four of the future statute of Sardinia: "the Region has legislative power over production and distribution of electricity" . Not a fence, but a prairie, to be understood, as the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court has repeatedly recalled, in the broader meaning of "energy governance". Nobody says a word. Everyone agrees, Sardinia can govern the issue of energy within the principles of the State. The theses on silence on a key topic such as energy are the result of opposing positions, never explicitly expressed.

Double-sided version

On the one hand, those who believed that being an "Island", ultra-peripheral, in itself entailed the need to govern "at home", today we would say "in house", the production and distribution of energy, on the other those who he wanted to totally "offload" the burden of "electrifying" Sardinia onto the Region. This latter thesis was supported by a "statutory" different decision for Sicily, which, although an island, was in fact kept connected to the state system due to the "Strait Pylons" which were being built in those years to connect the Sicilian coast with the Calabrian one, connecting that island region to the rest of Italy. The fact is that Sardinia, through magnanimous concession or sneaky buck-passing, found itself with what most constitutionalists have defined as the widest energy "autonomy-independence" ever recognized between the ordinary and special regions. A limit, the insular one, which appears counterbalanced by broad powers that would have allowed an "autonomous" government of one of the key factors of the economy and social development of a regional community: energy. A power that appeared "constitutionally" immeasurable also because among the powers and responsibilities that the Statute had assigned to Sardinia there were also those relating to the exercise of the Region's state-owned rights over public waters and the exercise of the Region's state-owned and property rights relating to mines, quarries, salt works (primary competence) and the industrial management of mines, quarries and salt works (concurrent competence). Rules on assets belonging to state water property which effectively recognized the Region as having "exclusive management in matters of public water", which made the legislative power for the use of water for hydroelectric purposes "primary". A precise combination: you have the management of public waters with which you can produce electricity to distribute throughout the entire regional territory. Added to this was another cornerstone: Sardinian expertise relating to mines was explicitly linked to energy minerals, not only to coal but also to liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, including geothermal resources.

Resistant standards

A constitutional and statutory framework still in force today, despite the State's repeated incursions, all aimed at curbing, denying and eliminating the powers of the Sardinian Region in terms of energy. One ambush after another that the Constitutional Court itself has repeatedly averted, starting from a ruling, number 22 of 1956, with which the Judges of the High Court had rejected the Government's attempt to submit the administrative functions of competence of the Region regarding public water and electricity, in "agreement" with the Ministry of Public Works. A first attempt at state interference rejected with an exemplary constitutional ruling. From that moment on, however, the state's assault on Sardinia's "energy" skills has been constant and invasive, with state laws that have never limited themselves to defining "frameworks", but rather to making the increasingly detailed rules, with the clear aim of increasingly compressing the power of the Region.

Sardinian Electric

To tell the truth, the Region is trying to imprint the embryo of a turning point with the birth of the Sardinian Electricity Authority. It is May 7, 1953. A subject under total Sardinian management, governed by five members designated by the regional council. A law implementing powers in the field of energy that managed to resist even the establishment of Eni in 1953. The first setback in 1962 when Enel, the National Electricity Authority, was founded. A regulatory passage that will profoundly impact the Italian energy system, including Sardinia.

State reverses

The Constitutional Court gives an interpretation of it as a relevant economic reform, placing it on a more stringent level for the Statute itself. We arrive at the nationalization of energy. The dream of Sardinia's electrical independence stops, relying totally on the State Authority. The regional companies are dissolved and the plan for a Sardinian energy government is drastically slowing down. Thirty-seven years later, it is 1999, it is the time of the Bersani decree: the electricity market is liberalized. No more direct management of energy by the State. Seventy-five years after its approval, in the Sardinian Statute, a rule still of constitutional rank, however, it still says: "the Region issues legislative provisions on the following matters: production and distribution of electricity". For now, however, silence reigns, with many complicities and many omissions.

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