A joint Sardinia-Corsica charter. To act as a barrier against the onslaught of offshore energy. Energy speculation is being pushed out. Since yesterday, a pact between the two islands has been in place, signed in Sartène by Mauro Pili and Paulu Felici Benedetti.
The former regional president and the pro-independence mayor. Because in the Strait of Bonifacio, where Italy becomes France and vice versa, 434 floating turbines "threaten the sea, coasts, and ecosystem." That's 7.2 gigawatts, well above the 6.2 allocated to Sardinia by the Draghi government, first, and then by the Meloni government, under the Brussels-led Green Deal. That is, the action plan that aims to transform Europe into the first climate-neutral continent, where CO2 emissions would be naturally offset by 2050. "At the price of devastation, however."
Yesterday's approval , given by the town hall of the Corsican municipality, about fifty kilometers from Bonifacio, is in the same EU waters: given that Ursula von der Leyen's Commission imposes production diktats, opposition to the projects is directed there. Eight of them fall within the Straits of Messina. On the eastern side, Olbia to be precise, the projects are called Nurax Wind, Poseidon, Tibula energia, and Sardinia North-east. They comprise 250 turbines for a total of 4,445 megawatts. On the other side, on the western side, are Sardinia North-west, Mare Sardegna, Alg, and Mistral, comprising 184 wind turbines and an installable capacity of 2,760 megawatts.
"The absence of shared planning is unthinkable," Pili and Benedetti said yesterday, "that is, the logic of piecemeal national authorizations, in the face of a systemic effect that offshore parks create." From Sartène, the course emerged clearly. Very clear. "These expanses of wind turbines, hundreds of meters high, would transform a corner of paradise into a marine industrial zone. Biodiversity, cetacean routes, fishing, recreational boating, and the entire tourism system of the two islands would be affected. The safety of navigation along the maritime link between the east and west of the Mediterranean, guaranteed precisely by the Strait between Sardinia and Corsica, would also be compromised." Pili is even more forceful: "The wind power assault threatens a unique natural, environmental, economic, and human ecosystem. The sea between our islands does not divide two peoples: it unites them. For this reason, the response must be joint, immediate, and unambiguous."
The Sardinia-Corsica pact aims to be "a strong and united voice in Europe vis-à-vis Rome, Paris, and Brussels." Sartène has laid the foundations for "permanent governance, a stable technical, legal, and environmental coordination table." The western and eastern fronts of the Straits of Messina "must be treated as strategic emergency corridors."
For Pili, an activist and investigative journalist, "Sardinia and Corsica are not two peripheries to be sacrificed on the altar of energy speculation. They are two nations, united by the same sea, the same history, and the same responsibility: now they must be defended from an unprecedented industrial assault." Benedetti is also making moves in the Corsican Regional Assembly, as leader of the independentist group "Core in Fronte": on October 2nd, we will vote against offshore development in the Chamber. Pili concludes: "In the Sardinian sea, the Ichnusa wind power project between Carloforte and Porto Flavia has already been approved. We cannot allow the same disgrace to be inflicted on the Straits of Messina. It would be an irreversible wound in the heart of the Mediterranean."
Alessandra Carta