The "feud of the wind" on Montiferru breaks out

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The first "flag"

Therefore, “Infrastrutture Spa” was responsible for the first design flag stuck between the villages of Suni, Sagama, Tinnura, Sindia and Macomer, the capital of Marghine. The ministry that belonged to Roberto Cingolani, who has now inexplicably become the personal energy consultant of the President of the Council of Ministers, wasted no time. The public evidence procedures envisaged by the accelerated path of the Pnrr were completed on 9 September last. This is where appetites turn into high-end corporate operations. The official papers and ministerial indications omit this step, but since 22 September the company "Infrastrutture Spa" is no longer the sole owner of that project.

Eni in Planargia

Hergo Renewables takes over, not just any company, given that it was none other than Eni who bought the 65% stake, through the company Plenitude, the "renewable" arm of the State Entity. The wind "game" in the land of Planargia, out of the blue, gets tough. Scanning dates is a puzzle that takes your breath away. Communication on the stock exchanges of the wind operation is sparse: «San Donato Milanese, 22 September 2022 – Plenitude – a 100% controlled Eni-owned benefit company, has launched a new partnership with Infrastrutture SpA for the development of solar and wind projects in Italy and Spain, through the acquisition of 65% of Hergo Renewables SPA, a company that owns a portfolio of projects in the two countries with a total capacity of approximately 1.5 GW. Infrastructures will keep the remaining 35%». With record-breaking timing, on 23 September, not even 24 hours after the share sale, the Ministry of Culture expressed its opinion, albeit wait-and-see, on the Suni wind farm with a lightning-fast acknowledgment of the very heavy takeover that took place just the day before the new company owned by ENI.

Mister Celano breaks in

Everything, therefore, up to that moment, was going smoothly. However, Eni's race against time to conquer the wind from Montiferru saw an unexpected and very harsh setback. On the scene of the wind invasion, in fact, an anonymous lord of the province bursts in, that of Aquila, a country unknown to most, Celano d'Abruzzo. His is a very tough opposition addressed directly to ENI itself. In the letter in our possession, however, there is much more than a simple confession.

Hot pages

Eleven dense pages, an unprecedented j'accuse , where, for the first time, the wind "system", interests and business, the "insane" earnings of these operations and the "lust" are put on paper boundless of the lords of the wind. Cesare Villa, the legal representative of Vcc Scano-Sindia, the company that has declared war on none other than the wind arm of ENI, writes to you. The dispute is not trivial. "Mister" Villa, in a nutshell, argues that the ENI project is too small to be useful to civil society, understood as a Sardinian community, too expensive and not even comparable to the "multiple" benefits that "his" project would have, that presented on 20 June by the "Vcc Scano-Sindia srl". We gave an account of it in the first episode of our investigation: a gigantic wind farm with 336 megawatts of energy, six times larger than the one with the six-legged dog, the unmistakable Eni brand. A veritable wind horde, a sort of wind plow, capable of crossing archaeological areas, forests and pristine landscapes. The devastation ratio is proportional, Eni is thinking of putting 10 blades at a height of 206 metres, the gentleman from Celano has planned 56. The dispute is no holds barred.

The frontal collision

The cards reveal a real "feud" of the wind. The patron of Abruzzo does not mince words and writes: «In the light of all that is reported below, it is evident that the VCC Project proportionally guarantees a smaller sacrifice of environmental matrices, compared to that imposed by the Infrastructure Project (now Eni ed), against the achievement of greater socio-economic utility.

Cheeky Apennines

The owner of the company that came from the Apennines to collect the Sardinian wind even dares to make daring environmental comparisons. Basically he says: the 56-blade project would be less invasive and more environmentally friendly than the 10-blade one. It might seem like a journalistic simplification, but the documentary pomposity in our possession is even more risky. Cesare Villa writes: «The application relating to the Infrastrutture SpA project (now Eni through Hero Renewables ed) deserves to be rejected, in the first place, because with the aforesaid project, Infrastrutture would create a work detrimental to the main provisions placed in the field of environmental protection". In short, this environmental neo-prophet descended from the Apennines to the land of Montiferru laments the ten blades of Eni, already devastating in themselves, to shamelessly "declaim" the "naturalist" praises of "his" 56.

Wind pantomime

If it weren't all written down in an official document, one could think of a pantomime from other times. Cesare Villa da Celano, however, knows no boundaries. The accusation against Eni is detailed: they want to put 5 of their ten shovels right where 5 of mine 56 are expected. The accusation is detailed with lots of sheets, cadastral maps and parcels, owners and those entitled to servitude. The owner of the "Celano company" writes: «The Infrastructure project (that of Eni), finally deserves not to receive a positive judgment of compatibility and not to be authorized due to obvious and irreparable technical-environmental interferences with the Vcc project also in light of the agreements already in place between Vcc Scano-Sindia srl and the interested owners».

Pale on top of each other

It is here that the statements are punctual and documentary. In fact, the owner of the Abruzzo-based company claims that he has the transfer or easement contracts in hand with the owners of the areas where, according to their calculations, they should place the wind turbines close to Suni and Sindia. In practice, according to this letter kept under cover, Eni and Vcc are candidates, not only figuratively, to put the wind turbines one above the other, in the same areas.

Those “secret” contracts

The difference, however, would be in the ownership title: according to the procedure indicated in the project, Eni would like to expropriate those areas with a procedure for public utility, the gentleman who came from Abruzzo, however, would have the contracts already acquired with him to place its wind forest in the heart of Montiferru. "Heavy" contracts ended up in our hands, but that's another story.

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