First the appeal to the Council: «The Pichetto Fratin decree», the one that assigned Sardinia 6.2 gigawatts of renewables by 2030, «can still be challenged, there are sixty days from June 21st». Then the appeal to the Sardinians, «the custodians of our territories, of our landscape: let us all fight together against the new colonialism of Rome which it wants to transform into energy servitude. We will soon begin collecting signatures." The double message comes from the Technical-Scientific Committee for Insularity, which met yesterday morning in a room of the Regina Margherita hotel in Cagliari to make the anti-speculation strategy public. «There is no time to waste», said the president Maria Antonietta Mongiu, accompanied by the lawyers Bebetto Ballero and Rita Dedola; by landscape engineers Giuseppe Biggio and Gian Valerio Sanna; by the geologist Giovanni Barrocu. Former senator Gianni Marilotti also spoke.
The premise of everything is that "the moratorium" of the Campo largo "does not save Sardinia because it suspends the authorizations but does not block them and seems deliberately ambiguous on the construction of the plants", underline Mongiu and Dedola. In these months of mobilization, "our Committee, which is a basic body, democratic and open to all positive actions, has always tried to dialogue with the Council", but the opposite has not happened. «To stop the onslaught of wind and photovoltaic energy it would have been enough for the Region, as we suggested, to insert paragraph 3 of the transitional rules attached to the PPR into the moratorium of 2 July», i.e. law 8/2024, explains Sanna. «The regulatory provision already protected Sardinia from shovels and panels twenty years ago, we don't understand the reason for this refusal».
The Region's deafness to the Committee's proposals is not the only regret that comes from the technical-scientific group. «We were heard in the Fourth and Fifth commissions of the Regional Council, where we presented a bill – explains Dedola again - . But we never received a response nor were we ever challenged about the invalidity of the regulatory framework." The Committee's bill extends the PPR to the whole of Sardinia, in application of the Urbani Code which, in article 145, assigns the functions of safeguarding, planning and management of the territory to the State and the Regions.
In the debate of recent months on the measures to be adopted to protect Sardinia from the onslaught of renewables disguised as energy transition, the proposal of the PPR extended to the hinterland had not convinced everyone, due to the risk of a path that was too long. Instead, "the Region has already surveyed, in the past, thanks to the collaboration with the Universities of Cagliari and Sassari and the use of over one hundred teachers, 258 Sardinian agricultural landscapes and more than 20 thousand archaeological artefacts", says Mongiu. In fact, the Committee's bill states that the Plan will be approved within six months of the passing of the law.
It is clear that if the Todde Council wanted, there would be the political and regulatory tools to oppose state provisions and secure Sardinia. «The Pichetto Fratin decree – underlined Biggio – presents a series of inconsistencies which alone would be enough to challenge the provision. For example, nowhere does the criterion used to assign installable power to the Regions appear. It is not known whether the attribution of this capacity occurred on the basis of territorial size or population. In reality it is very likely that this was done taking into account the requests received by Terna". Mongiu reiterated it: «It is unacceptable that on such an important matter as the protection of the territory and landscape, the State leaves management at the mercy of the market».
Ballero repeatedly insisted precisely on the powers that politics would have. The lawyer sounded the alarm for the Region to «regain its powers, its competences and no longer have an ancillary role towards the State», but if anything «treat on an equal footing by applying the powers deriving from the statutory provisions. Both the Draghi and Pichetto Fratin decrees expressly provided that the competences of the special regions are without prejudice. Indisputably, there must be a political initiative from the Council to challenge this latest decree due to conflict of attribution."
And if during yesterday's press conference, Mongiu recalled that "we need unity of purpose to avoid irreversible damage to Sardinia", Barrocu highlighted how "the territory of Sardinia is already torn apart". The professor referred to two phenomena: «The erosion caused by the plants already built which, moreover, have discharged waste material downstream, making it sterile land that was previously cultivable». With his gaze on the offshore, Barrocu recalled "the impact that sea barriers could have on wave motion", with consequent "possible and irreversible alteration of the coasts".
Sanna closed the interventions from the table by going into the details of paragraph 3 of the transitional rules to the PPR. «The validity of that regulatory provision was based on a twofold aspect. On the one hand, wind farms that had not yet caused an irreversible change in the state of the places when the law came into force were blocked; on the other hand, for the interventions authorized but whose work had not started, the blockade of the works was based on the absence of Via, the Environmental Impact Assessment". Finally Marilotti highlighted the fact that on the energy transition, with the Draghi decree first and then the Pichetto Fratin, "the State has not respected the Aarhus Convention which gives citizens the right to consult environmental documents held by the authorities".
In the background remains the distance that the Council and the majority in the Region have marked with respect to the technical-scientific Committee for insularity: here the commitment is based on the collection of signatures. At Campo Largo it will then be difficult not to comply with the popular will. Mongiu said this at the opening of the press conference: «From civic uses to public lands, the Sardinians have always defended the landscape and have always worked to limit the consumption of the territory, perceived as an identity value. We cannot accept that this environmental awareness is questioned by political decision-makers in the short term."