It is a long story of announcements and deceptions, an infinite succession of expedients and planned delays. When there was something to take, they took, always with both hands. Now that there is something to give back, they run away, always running. Pollution, debris and rusty chimneys remain on the ground. Workers, hopes and the future remain on foot. Deep in Sulcis, once the electric motor of Sardinia, the streets have even lost their signs. There hasn't been any production here for a long time, if anything it drags on. The prices of lead, zinc and aluminum no longer mark the time. Here even the workers, in the glorious times of primary metallurgy, followed the performance of the London Metal Exchange to make sure of the good fortune of the Portovesme factories.

The announcement calendar

Now, at the limit, they are forced to count the days in the calendar of mockery, those which for decades have marked without hesitation the modern history of the industrial center of Sulcis, born to give prestige to Italy without metals and without mines. If the copious archives of state announcements were speaking, bombastic and baseless, one could glimpse a strategy that comes from afar: let's "rob" the territory, through state and parastatal companies, take away low-cost metals, to be transformed in second and third processes in rich and "productive" Italy, then we leave the "promised land" without work and polluted, in the most total productive desert.

Desert, last chapter

The latest chapter of that cursed plan of cheap exploitation is taking hold, without praise and with much infamy. In Sulcis, in the general silence, the hour of the "desert" is taking place. The announcement by the Minister of Energy Security, Gilberto by name, Pichetto and Fratin by surname, on the end of the coal era in Italy, is one of the acknowledgments of the obvious statements: the exit from coal for Sardinia is postponed between 2026-2028. As if he had announced that tomorrow, thanks to climate change, the sun will rise. In reality, those dates between 2026 and 2028, like the previous ones, are far-fetched, without any serious planning of events, much less a clear and defined energy strategy capable of assigning the Island a short-term energy future. medium or long term.

The nefarious Draghi decree

Anyone who handles energy issues with any familiarity understands this. To date, there is no concrete and defined strategy to give energy to an entire island, considering that the plan to occupy and devastate it with wind turbines and photovoltaic panels is meeting unexpected resistance in local communities and municipal administrations, from north to south. of the Island. The "Draghi decree", the one improperly called "Energy Sardinia", intended to gut the island through wind-financial speculation declared to be of "public interest", has stalled in the Council of State, awaiting a new formulation, even It was announced about ten times, but always remained hanging on the tree of free ads, perpetually in production. In the energy limbo of a Sardinia destined to suffer the interests of public and private electricity lobbies, the hardest blow to the productive and economic future of the island is being dealt.

Time out

The decree that had approved the last Integrated Environmental Authorization of the Enel power plant, dedicated with impunity to Grazia Deledda, had marked the deadline without appeal: «The present authorization (of February 2020 ed.) has a duration of sixteen years, without prejudice to the authorization to the use of coal as a fuel until 31 December 2025, in compliance with the ministerial decree of 10 November 2017 and the proposal for an integrated national plan for energy and climate transmitted to the European Commission on 8 January 2019". In short, to date the provision ignores the chatter, which will remain so until a law establishes the transition from announcements to actual postponement.

Region without power plant

What marks Sardinia's energy defeat, however, is not the delayed closure of the Enel power plant, but rather the absence of a plan capable of guaranteeing the island that energy independence that all the electrical "safety" rules have always had imposed for an island region. State incompetence and arrogance, from parastatal companies to the Draghi decree, have planned to shut down every power plant on the island without planning a reconversion, as has happened in much of Italy. In this wicked state energy isolation plan, not only will Sardinia remain the only region in Europe and Italy without methane, but it will also be the first European regional territory without a power plant, if we exclude the gift given to the oil companies of Saras, with the essentiality recognized by Moratti's Sarlux, awaiting the arrival of foreigners.

Energy disarray

The state of confusion in Rome is all in the letters between state bodies and companies. Snam, for example, on mandate from the Government of Rome, had planned two floating regasifiers, one in Portovesme and one in Porto Torres. In the economic plan, the most rational one, the objective was to convert the two coal-fired power plants to methane. In reality, Enel's response, recorded in the documents, confirmed that the Draghi government, the holder of that decision, had passed what turned out to be nothing more than the decree of Sardinia's "energy disarray". In fact, Enel, with a hard face, had written to the Ministry of the Environment that Snam's plan should literally be thrown away because they, the owners of the power plant, had no intention of converting it to gas.

Escape, without appeal

The only possible plan for Enel has been written for some time: close everything, leave only the batteries of "Mao's grandchildren" on the field, to be charged with wind and photovoltaic devastation to be further consumed in the already distorted scenario of the Sulcis coast. For the rest, escape. A film already seen. Just look at the "Portoscuso" power plant, the one decommissioned in 2012, close to the expanse of "Made in China" batteries. The "annihilation" plan for that tangle of scrap metal, for example, had to be completed, according to Enel's timing , in a maximum of 144 days for the preparation of the documents and 192 days for the demolition of the chimneys. Those two rust chimneys, crumbling and useless, are still there. And they will remain there for a long time, like the rest of the work planned but never done.

Rust advances

And then, there in front, the large chimney towers, a 250 meter high chimney, that of the “Grazia Deledda” power plant. A power plant now without a future, with the indelible and evident signs of an already decreed status : "dead and buried". It certainly works, despite all its limitations, but the advance of rust and failures are visible to the naked eye, an eloquent sign of a system whose future is marked. If all the ISPRA checks ended with a substantial green light, as the images we publish demonstrate, the evident signs of a general decay of a power plant for which the Palaces of Rome have decided the end without alternatives cannot be missed. In the general silence, yet another cathedral of rust and wreckage advances. Sardinia is a candidate to "grope" in the dark. Without power plants, without methane, without hydrogen, without a future.

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