WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Italy Sicilia Libertaria: The words of deception, Sicily as an energy hub (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Of the empty words that power circulates to ensnare people, many of them are in

English. And there is one, in the energy sector, which is synonymous with
trouble. It's the word hub. Unfortunately it is the term that more and more often
accompanies Sicily. Politicians, entrepreneurs and environmentalists (we will
come back to it) have discovered, goodness to them, that Sicily is in the middle
of the Mediterranean Sea and that, goodness to them, it is a bridge between
Africa and Europe. So they are trying to design an island that can become their
energy supply. They want to take without giving, exploiting the historic
condition of weakness (that too is imposed) and the complicity of the local
apparatuses, interested in dividing up the cake or, more often, in begging for a
few crumbs.

Let's start with fossil sources. In the first days of January, the Priolo
refinery passed from the Russian Lukoil to the Cypriot Goi Energy, in that
process of financialisation of the economy which means that the historic heavy
industry of the Syracuse area has slipped into the hands of an international fund
which, as the GKN affair in the Florentine area, he will have no qualms about
using the ten thousand workers, directly and indirectly, as a bargaining chip
with the state. It doesn't get better if you think of Gela, where the story of
the energy hub has become the occasion, as we told in the last Special, to make
the Sicilian town the Italian capital of gas. A gas, however, of which not even a
drop remains in Sicily. The same happens in Mazara del Vallo, where the Transmed
gas pipeline (named after Enrico Mattei because flattery is never too much) has
become the most important Italian plant in terms of energy since in 2022 it led
from Algeria between 23 and 24 billion cubic meters of gas, i.e. about a third of
annual national consumption. Again almost all the gas went to Northern Italy. And
there's more: on 10 January Eni and Snam announced the creation of SeaCorridor,
"the company with equal governance", reads the launch release of the initiative,
which will encourage "potential development initiatives in the value chain of
hydrogen also thanks to the natural resources of North Africa".

Sicily therefore, as already happens in Gela with the Libyan gas pipeline
GreenStream, confirms itself as a hub in the sense that it will strengthen
Italian energy colonialism: the idea is to appropriate African resources - it is
worth remembering that to obtain hydrogen the he fundamental element is water -
to transform them into fuel to be used, especially in Northern Italy, and
exported. Yes, because at the same time the Meloni government announced the
resumption of an old plan that had remained in the drawers until now, that is the
desire to extend the idea of the hub to the whole of Italy, making it a transit
area from Africa to Europe as quickly as possible climate-altering of fossil
fuels, with Sicily playing a leading role in this design. What is worse is that
the same predatory mechanism is intended to be replicated with renewable energies.

For a couple of years, the regional office that issues permits (the Technical
Commission for verifying environmental impact) has been inundated with requests
for wind and photovoltaic plants: from 400 in 2019 to 600 in 2022. These are
mainly of large plants that repeat the fossil (or rather capitalistic) mechanics
of appropriating natural resources, in this case sun and wind, to make them an
object of profit for the few. Because renewable plants, as the Sicilian
researcher Samadhi Lipari has been pointing out for some time, in the face of an
undeniable and evident considerable reduction in the environmental impact (which
in any case is not zero) compared to fossil sources, require a smaller number of
force/labor and, at the moment, provide for a much lower tax rate. According to
the REGions 2030 report, in just two regions, Puglia and Sicily, so far over 70%
of new projects on renewable sources are concentrated. And, contrary to what is
believed, the Sicilian Region "has a good absolute number of single
authorizations issued". And to say that the Region would also have a plan to
prevent mega-plants. Alberto Pierobon, the regional councilor for energy who was
then torpedoed by Musumeci in 2021, had drafted it. The document provided for a
stop to too large structures, favored rooftop systems and identified 260 mines
and 200 abandoned landfills for those on the ground. However, nothing more was
heard of that plan. Thus entire territories find themselves at the mercy of
companies with offices abroad or, as in the case of the Trapani area, of links
with the mafia, just mention the story of the "wind power king" Vito Nicastri,
convicted of external competition in a mafia association because considered the
figurehead of the boss Matteo Messina Denaro.
Faced with the hundreds of renewable projects, therefore, the attention of the
environmentalist world should remain high. Instead, some associations have
decided to sponsor and lead the way in this hoarding of resources. In this
regard, I will tell you an anecdote that concerns me. A year ago I found myself
invited by Legambiente to an online meeting which denounced the stalemate of 12
mega-renewable plants. I took the opportunity to point out that the new
infrastructures, certainly necessary, would in any case have had to develop a
decentralized and grassroots energy because otherwise the oppositions of the
territories would have continued to exist and would have even been justified. I
was sharply criticized by Stefano Ciafani, national president of Legambiente, who
proposed live the usual story "what is our fault if the sun and the wind are in
Sicily and if the industries are in the North?". It is no coincidence that
Legambiente, WWF and FAI have recently issued an appeal in which they ask the
government to accelerate further with the authorizations

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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