During the hot summer of 2024, the Committees against the Energy Exploitation of Sardinia launched a citizens’ initiative bill called Pratobello24.

The historical background
Its name derives from another episode of exploitation attempted in 1969, when the Italian government unilaterally decided to establish a military firing range in Pratobello, a stretch of common land used for seasonal grazing near Fonni and Orgosolo. Pratobello, like other shared properties in Sardinia, represents what survived the “Editto delle Chiudende.” This decree is often described either as the introduction of modern private property on the island or as the end of a society based on solidarity—depending on whom you ask. For the extractive economy of the Savoy State, the only thing that truly mattered was simplifying tax collection by reallocating land to fewer, loyal landlords. A few decades later (1862–1899), the construction of a railway facilitated the transport of Sardinian timber to the ports. The king is dead, but the habit of expropriating land and extracting taxes and resources remains alive under the Italian Republic. The same pattern continues today, with the government imposing the installation of large-scale energy plants and HVDC links, regardless of the decline in local demand or the Sardinians’ desire to protect their land.

210,054 signatures
Compared to 1969, Sardinia lacks of political representation within Italian institutions. Committees against Energy Exploitation adopted a proactive strategy: instead of simply opposing national energy plans, they proposed small-scale solar systems on rooftops and parking areas as a sustainable alternative to vast industrial wind and solar farms.
The campaign gained strong backing from the L’Unione Sarda publishing group, owner of the island’s leading newspaper and its most-watched regional television channel. On October 4, 2024, the Committees delivered 210,054 citizens’ signatures to the regional government building in Cagliari—an unmistakable signal that could not be ignored.

The Trojan horse
And it wasn’t ignored. Pratobello24 included a provision for research on hydrogen. But on October 12, 2024, the front page of Unione Sarda declared that hydrogen, not rooftop solar panels, was the Committees’ chosen path for the green transition. Suddenly, Article 4 came to resemble a Trojan horse, seemingly planted by the newspaper’s owners to support the fossil fuel industry—particularly hydrogen from steam reforming.
Social networks erupted with messages and videos accusing the Committees of betrayal, and Pratobello’s supporters began to fall apart. This effectively slowed down Pratobello24’s kinetic energy at a critical moment.
As a result, the proposal was sidelined and never even discussed on Todde’s agenda. Meanwhile, the regional government rushed through Law 20 in less than two months (December 2024 -remember, it had taken four months just to pass a moratorium) Flawed by design, the law was immediately challenged in the Constitutional Court.

Vaporware
Few points about hydrogen:
Hydrogen is not a primary energy source but rather a means to transport and store energy. Depending on how it’s produced, hydrogen is classified into different types:

• Green hydrogen is produced through electrolysis powered 100% by renewable energy. This is considered the cleanest but it is also the most expensive and least efficient method.
• Grey hydrogen is made by distilling methane, which releases carbon atoms into the atmosphere, making it the cheapest but most polluting process.
• Blue hydrogen is a variation of grey hydrogen where the carbon emissions are captured and stored underground, such as in abandoned mines.
• Pink hydrogen is produced by electrolysis powered by nuclear energy.

Each production process consumes several times more energy and costs considerably more than simply using the primary energy source directly.
As a transport medium, hydrogen requires either extremely low temperatures or chemical bonding with other molecules, such as:
    • Nitrogen, in the toxic form of ammonia 
    • Carbon, in methanol, ironically a fuel the green industry aims to phase out 
There are some research centers subsidized by the Sardinian regional government dedicated to grey hydrogen. According to these same studies, green hydrogen would only become economically viable if its cost dropped to one-quarter of what it is today. Despite this, there are frequent announcements about converting urban and train transport to green hydrogen subsidized by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NNRP). It’s clear who will ultimately bear the cost difference compared to running trains directly on electricity or other fuels.
In other words: Vaporware!

Lot and his daughters
Green companies and self-entitled environmental associations oppose Pratobello24 because they believe that installing solar panels only on rooftops would not be enough to reach the production target. Even if it were, the costs of installation and maintenance would be higher than those for ground-based solar and wind farms, eroding the margins of their subsidized operations. All these discussions assume that Sardinia must embrace the burden-sharing logic.
Unfortunately, the same logic was also Pratobello’s flaw. Instead of questioning the obligation to meet the 6.2 GW target—through expropriations or incentives that make selling land more convenient than cultivating it—it became a trade-off between one resource (land) and another (roof surfaces).
On paper, using rooftops to generate energy for self-consumption seems like a great idea to reduce landscape impact. However, many questions arise:
    • Should citizens voluntarily offer their roof surfaces? 
    • What protections would prevent mandatory requisitions similar to current land expropriation? 
    • Should citizens have pre-emption rights over the produced energy? 
    • Would homeowners be willing to grant access to their roofs 356 days a year? 
Most importantly, who would have to pay for this?
We will likely never know the answers to these questions.

What we care about.
We do not care about colorful hydrogen, newspapers, political parties, or free solar panels. The real reason why 210,054 people signed Pratobello24 was because we did not want to submit to yet another exploitation by the Italian government—especially when it would come at the expense of our private property, by destroying the landscape shaped by our ancestors, and threatening our ability to preserve our way of life and find our own path in the economy.
This map shows how many people signed for Pratobello24 on each city, town, village.