Red alert, like those that are launched when there is no longer a minute to waste. On the one hand politics, the institutions, the "storm" of chatter and bombastic proclamations, on the other the "military" march of lobbies and fixers, multinationals and frontmen, all unleashed in the great race for the wind and sun of Sardinia. Every day that passes, in this land that the Palaces of Rome would like to transform into a wind and solar colony of Italy, an attack is planned on the history, on the landscape, on the identity traits of an Island that, not surprisingly, culture and science have always described as a "Continent".
The revolt grows
If a myriad of committees grows spontaneously in every remote promontory of this land to be protected, with an increasingly strong and widespread awareness, on the other hand there is a real "boarding", with an increasingly invasive and devastating descent of projects of all kinds, with areal and spatial dimensions that are literally putting every geographical area of Sardinia under siege, from north to south, passing through the center. The pressure on the island is unprecedented, a race for "planned rearmament" marked by indicators that are now put in black and white by the same reports of the state offices, no longer willing to remain silent, not even them, on what is happening with impunity in this Earth.
Race to "wind power rearmament"
Since the Sardinian regional council sent a bill to the Regional Council on 30 April on a "fake" moratorium, with non-existent effects on the procedures and authorizations of new industrial wind and photovoltaic installations, a rush has been unleashed for the protocol of Ministry. Just read the publications of the wind-photovoltaic projects from the end of April to today, with the Department of the Environment in haywire, unable to publish on its website, with the pace of the presentations, all the projects that follow one another at an incessant pace. The new industrial settlements, to the sound of wind "forests" and "expanses" of silicon panels, are all armored behind the wording "administrative verification", nothing more than the time necessary to transfer the files from the projects sent to the Ministry and the publication on the state website.
In one month 1,000 megawatts
In practice, in less than a month, another twenty wind and photovoltaic projects have been registered for a total power of almost another thousand megawatts. Not only were the lords of the wind and the sun not in the least impressed by the presentation of the bill being examined by the Regional Council, but they decided to further raise the bet on the Sardinian "climb". The strategy of lobby & company is clear: they aim to dramatically increase the projects presented for the insane hope that they will be evaluated with the "previous rules", in practice without any limits or prohibitions.
Wild lawyers
Added to this is a further pressing effect on the offices of Rome and Cagliari, entrusted to law firms and Palazzo lobbies, both Roman and European, which are pushing to make the obligation of the offices to approve wind projects without delay and photovoltaic. The " Red III " community directive launched in November last year has yet to be transposed into state regulations and it cannot be ruled out that the same Decree on "suitable areas" may contain a "maximum deadline" for issuing authorizations which, at least for so-called suitable areas, cannot be exceeded.
Times expired
In this sense, most of the projects filed with the Ministry of the Environment would have already well exceeded the times already indicated as "maximum" for the investigation and final approval. Indeed, the law firms of the energy lobbies are pursuing the inclusion in law of an official authorization linked to the principle of " silence-consent ", a perverse and illegitimate mechanism, further devastating for Sardinia.
Damages & liability
In the reminder communications that the team of lawyers is preparing in order to request the immediate approval of the projects presented to both the Ministry and the Region, and therefore the formalization of an acquired right, they are dusting off the last paragraph of art. 25 of the Consolidated Environmental Law: « the expiry of the maximum deadlines for issuing environmental authorizations for larger plants produces disciplinary and administrative-accounting liability for the non-compliant manager and official and, with respect to the interest of the proponent, compensation for the unjust damage caused as a consequence of the willful or culpable failure to comply with the deadline for concluding the proceedings ".
Boomerang risk
The Region's Bill therefore risks turning into an unprecedented boomerang , triggering a rush to present projects and their rapid approval. Moreover, the text of the regional law proposal does not in the slightest touch on the procedural-authorization aspect, elements which it could not in any case affect, but it does not even raise the only possible, urgent, effective and immediate defense, that of a stringent "urban planning regulation ” of exclusive autonomist competence of the Sardinian Region.
The “preventive” trap
This race on the timing of approval of projects is accompanied by the key word "priority", which already appeared in the "Agriculture" decree law just launched by the Meloni Government. In that "ingenious" government provision, it essentially states: the bans on building photovoltaics in the countryside apply only to projects that will be presented after the entry into force of the decree-law, all others already presented will be evaluated with the legislation “previous”, i.e. without constraints and prohibitions.
Avalanche of approvals
It is clear that, if Sardinia does not equip itself with its own urgent and effective urban planning legislation, there is a risk that the state one could apply, allowing the examination of the mountain of projects already presented on the island without any stringent urban planning regulations, leaving made a clear field for the devastation of the land of the Nuraghi. Not an apocalyptic scenario of imaginative memory, but exactly what the same state bodies, those less inclined to lobby pressure, put down in black and white a few days ago when examining yet another wind project in the promontories of Isili, in the heart of Sardinia. The project under examination is yet another from Saras, the oil company par excellence.
Industrial devastation
The opinion, decidedly negative, has a strong signature, that of Luigi La Rocca, the Special Superintendent for the Pnrr. A technical opinion already sent to the Ministry of the Environment which constitutes a milestone that goes well beyond the "Sardeolica" project, the "windy" arm of the oil companies. Words as heavy as boulders, statements that allow us to understand the strength of an unprecedented alarm : « if all the projects presented were implemented, there would be a saturation of the vast area involved, implementing the replacement of this landscape, rich in archaeological and architectural evidence, with a new typically industrial landscape ». , on an environmental and landscape level, transforming the natural "genius" of the Island into an industrial jumble of wind turbines and photovoltaic panels. A risk that is now imminent if politics and institutions do not interrupt the "sweet" doing nothing in the face of the progress of devastation, lobbies and fixers. Disaster is on the horizon.