Renewables, suitable areas: tight deadlines and bureaucratic hurdles for Sardinian municipalities

The game of (allegedly) suitable areas (and those that are not) for the installation of renewable energy production plants is played out on tight deadlines and with a gigantic amount of bureaucracy dumped on the (weak) shoulders of the Sardinian municipal offices.
The mayor of Villanovaforru Maurizio Onnis is making public the background to the procedure strongly desired by the Region, publishing (upcoming) dates and documents.

While waiting for the evolution of the popular law proposal Pratobello '24, which would protect the vast majority of the island's landscape through urban constraints, this is what happens: on the basis of the energy decree, Sardinia must indicate which portions of its territory should host wind and photovoltaic energy.

There are suitable areas (where the procedures would be accelerated), unsuitable areas (whose classification would not exclude the installation of systems), ordinary areas (where ordinary procedures would be followed to build wind farms or photovoltaic systems) and areas for which there is a ban on installing photovoltaic systems with ground-mounted modules (agricultural areas).

Who should define them? In theory the Region, which however has passed the buck to the Municipalities. In the Municipalities of Sardinia in the last few days some letters have been delivered. With the first, the regional councilor for Urban Planning Francesco Spanedda had announced that, shortly, the mayors would be summoned - with their municipal technicians - to illustrate how and where it would be possible to install systems in their territory. There are Municipalities that do not even have the staff to draw up a tender for the installation of a fountain and now they have to deal with a crucial issue for Sardinia, the energy issue.

Shortly after, here is the call: mayors and representatives of the offices – those of Medio Campidano, at least – must show up in Villacidro on the 10th. And by the 12th they must fill out a detailed Excel form in which they must indicate the areas, their characteristics, provide the mapping of the areas, indicate their owners and specify any causes of limitation to suitability, detailed in the Energy decree, which in turn refers to numerous and complex protection regulations. All in a few days.

The Region also admits that it is not an easily edible subject, which in recent days has decided to invest 25 thousand euros to identify two external professionals who will collaborate in identifying suitable areas. The reason is written in the documents of the assignment without a call for tenders: they took into account «the times foreseen by the Decree, the limited human resources of the administration with expertise in information systems and territorial data, the amount of data to be analyzed and processed relating to the entire regional territory» and, again, they «evaluated the hours of work necessary to achieve the objective». Conclusion: « There is a need to acquire a technical assistance service for the administration staff». So in the Region, imagine in a small Municipality.

"A million things could be said and I will limit myself to one consideration", says Mayor Onnis instead on the Region-Municipalities relationship: "It is really shocking that such an important issue, concerning everything, everyone and for such a long time, is finally decided by an aseptic bureaucratic document. It is total nonsense. I believe that in the next few days the technical offices of the Municipalities will have a lot to do".