One hundred and fifty years ago. Jules Gabriel Verne, in his restless and extraordinarily imaginative life, never paid too much attention to the boundaries of the Universe. He has traveled the globe far and wide, from " Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea " to " Journey to the Center of the Earth ". He never despaired of the more irreverent names that his first novels unleashed in the envy of those who did not enjoy the same long and prophetic outlook. They accused him of everything and more, from childhood writer to "father of science fiction". He did not regret it, each time looking towards more and more unexplored horizons, both by science and by imagination.

The Mysterious Island

Imagine when, on the threshold of 1874, he edited the first voyage of " The Mysterious Island ". Not just a novel, not exclusively the restless imagination of a wandering writer from beyond the Alps, but a far-sighted prophecy tailored to that imaginary strip of land, surrounded by troubled waters, with the settlers of the time aiming to defend their land from foreign invasions overseas. The “ Jules of France ” did not speak of Sardinia.

Almost Sardinia

His visionary imagination, however, was shaped as an exact geographical reproduction of the land of the Nuraghi: Island, attacked by invaders attracted by its riches, senseless search for autonomy and economic and energy independence. It is in that story as compelling as it is visionary that the "prophet" sculpts his most enlightened prediction: «I believe that water will one day be used as a fuel, that the hydrogen and oxygen of which it is made, used separately or simultaneously , will offer a source of inexhaustible heat and light and of an intensity that fossil coal cannot provide. Water is the coal of the future." One hundred and fifty years ago, in fact.

Giant of Physics

On an equally mysterious island, that of Sardinia, which has also always been attacked and invaded by profiteers and speculators of all kinds, twenty years have passed, almost an eternity in the face of the progress of artificial intelligence. In the Gregorian calendar it was May, the year of the Lord 2002. Energy, then, was still only turbans and barrels, OPEC and Arabs, petrodollars and refineries, including the eyesore located in the heart of the Gulf of Angels. The prophecy of the "gas station attendant" who fills you up with an ideal water pump was still floundering in the depths of science fiction when the most high-sounding name in world research landed on the Island of the Sun and the Wind. Carlo Rubbia, Nobel Prize for Physics in 1984, visionary and scientist, irreverent and enlightened, when he lands in the land occupied by the Morattis, Eni, petrochemicals and coal, does not yet know the mission that will be entrusted to him. The gaze is long, it aims at the primacy of home-made energy, produced with those inexhaustible resources which, as Verne wrote, one day will be the coal of the future. He accepts, without reservations, the giant of "Physics", always a long and determined gaze: he will have to design the Hydrogen Island, an epochal turning point to build energy independence for the future of Sardinia and the Sardinians.

The Sardinian challenge

Rubbia threw himself headlong into that project. Twenty years ago today, it was 2003, under his scientific guidance that vision took shape. The ambition of futuristic primacy was translated into the " Trinomial Project: Sardinia-Solar-Hydrogen ". The objective was spelled out in black and white: «To achieve direct production by the Region of hydrogen from renewable sources, starting from concentrated thermodynamic solar power, limiting territorial consumption as much as possible».

Energy independence

The more global strategy envisaged a "Mediterranean Energy" plan that the Sardinian Region should have presented to the European Commission: «Proposal for an innovative study for the feasibility of Sardinia's energy and water self-sufficiency consisting in the design of storage systems for 'thermal energy and tower systems for the study of concentrated thermodynamic solar energy'. A few years later boycotts and system brakes erupted on the stage. The oil potentates and others made themselves heard. The initial conditions had blown up, Rubbia decided to leave. The project that would have revolutionized the history, not only of energy, of Sardinia stopped. As a trailblazer in the world, the Island now finds itself chasing once again. The hydrogen projects presented in the confused mare magnum of the Pnrr have the relevance of a microwave oven, nothing far-sighted, all micro-interventions incapable of attacking the emergency and the future. Today, more than ever, however, Sardinia, both on a legislative and constitutional, innovative and strategic level, is in a position to impose and re-propose that decisive role in the self-production of energy, rejecting the sender's speculative attacks from those who want to come to the An island that "makes sun and wind", just as wood was once obtained from the Sardinian woods. Enel has decided to shut down the Sulcis power plant. The excuse is that it runs on coal. In the rest of Italy the identical power plants are being converted to gas. With all due respect to Eni & company who will continue to sell, buy and drill around the world, in spite of the Dubai Conference.

The coal of the future

Even Jules Verne said it, one hundred and fifty years ago: hydrogen will be the coal of the future. Around the world, from Australia to Germany, from Scotland to Jeju Island in South Korea, green hydrogen power plants are being designed and built. If Enel closes the Portovesme power plant, the Sardinian Region has on its side a decree from the President of the Republic, never revoked, to create, with an international tender, in full autonomy an innovative power plant capable of replacing coal with hydrogen. Moreover, on the basis of the Sardinian Statute, a constitutional rule, the Region can produce and distribute energy. The "combined provisions" of the Statute, current regulations and the strategic nature of the "Hydrogen Island" can still shape the future. In short, the Sardinians could produce energy from the sun and wind, generating and distributing electricity through latest generation hydrogen power plants, stopping once and for all the speculative plan of the lords of the shovels and panels.

Sleep & French

Of course, we need to abandon our sleep and complicity with certain potentates, from oilmen to air slicers in the land of Sardinia. We have to hurry, though. In France, Jules Verne was read. And it is no coincidence that a French multinational, HDF Energy, has already set its sights on Sardinia. They define themselves as "pioneers in hydrogen energy". They have already declared the project on their website: «HDF is determined to fight for the decarbonisation of electricity production and energy independence throughout the world, with Sardinia as the new challenge». They are shameless like few others: «The Renewstable projects make maximum use of the abundance of Sardinia's natural resources to achieve the island's energy independence». After having torn up the Sardinian forests over the centuries, the French are now also applying to make hydrogen on Sardinian land. Welcome to the Island of Wind and Sleep.

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