“Why are you here?” Fabrizio Pilo, an electrical engineer, asks me as we sit in an outdoor café near his home in Cagliari, an ancient city on the island of Sardinia. It’s a fair question. I’m a journalist from the United States. I’d just stepped off my flight 2 hours prior and come straight to this meeting, suitcase still stowed in my rental car. I’m here to see three intriguing new energy projects under development in Sardinia. I’d heard there’s strong public resistance to renewable energy, and I want to understand why that is. I tell Pilo, who is vice rector for innovation at the University of Cagliari, that I hope he’ll share some insights before I head out on a reporting trip across the island. (My answer seems to satisfy him, and he kindly gives me an hour of his time). This won’t be the first time that I’m asked to explain my presence on the island. I’d expected it, to some extent; I’m a foreign journalist poking around, after all. What I didn’t expect was the depth of Sardinians’ distrust, not just of journalists, but of any outsider, particularly ones with authority. Over the last few years, developers of wind and solar projects, most of whom aren’t from here, have been absorbing the bulk of this smoldering, communal wariness. Activists Maria Grazia Demontis [left] and Alberto Sala, photographed inside the archaeological monument Giants’ Tomb of Pascarédda, have worked to stop the construction of wind farms by organizing protests and taking legal actions through their organization Gallura Coordination. Luigi Avantaggiato In fact, the resistance is so widespread among Sardinians that over the course of two months in 2024, a grassroots petition to ban new wind and solar projects gathered over 210,000 certified signatures. That’s more than a quarter of Sardinia’s typical voter turnout and represents a cross-party consensus. People stood in long lines in public squares to sign. And it worked: Political leaders responded swiftly with an 18-month moratorium on renewable energy construction. “I’ve never seen so much engagement for anything” in Sardinia, says Elisa Sotgiu , a literary sociologist at the University of Oxford, who was born and raised on the island. “Sardinia has a bunch of problems like enormous unemployment. There’s lots of emigration because there are no jobs. It’s one of the poorest areas in Europe. The area is just decaying,” she says. “And yet the thing people are demonstrating against is renewable energy.” And the opposition continues: A network of mayors has mobilized for the cause. Thousands of people show up at organized protests. Activists vandalize grid equipment. Families are passing down these stories of resistance to their children as a point of pride. Local media outlets are egging it on, frequently publishing misinformation tinged with fearmongering. These aren’t just NIMBY complaints—not in the pejorative sense, at least. The resistance, and the distrust underlying it, is rooted in the island’s complex history, both recent and ancient. It’s based on a past that the Sardinian people carry with them—a past that has seeded a deep sense of suspicion and vulnerability. Resistance, I learn, is part of what it means to be Sardinian. Fabrizio Giulio Luca Pilo, vice rector of innovation at the University of Cagliari, has been working to help Sardinia transition to cleaner, more reliable energy. Luigi Avantaggiato “It is a very sad situation,” Pilo tells me. “There are a lot of economic reasons to do the [energy] transition.” It could attract new companies such as data centers, which would create new jobs, he argues. It could reduce Sardinia’s reliance on imported gas and fuel, making the island more independent. New economic activity on the island might help reverse its population decline, he adds. And while what’s happening on Sardinia is unique, it also represents a larger trend: A growing number of communities around the world are opposing wind- and solar-farm construction, to the consternation of stakeholders. By 2025, nearly one-fourth of the counties in the United States had enacted some impediment to new utility-scale wind and solar energy—up from as few as 15 percent two years earlier, according to a USA Today analysis . In Africa, community pushback successfully canceled major projects such as the 60-megawatt Kinangop Wind Park in Kenya. In India, local pastoralists are challenging the 13-gigawatt Ladakh solar and wind project. And the European Union’s top-down push for renewable energy has created opposition in many communities. Their reasons vary—land-use preferences, generational ethos, government resentment, property values, economic effects, aesthetics—but all of these struggles have this in common: The resisters are passionate and they are often successful in blocking development. This is a looming problem for the energy transition. Unlike large, centralized coal and nuclear power plants, renewable energy is geographically spread out, so it touches far more communities. Sardinia offers one of the clearest cases of what can go wrong when renewable-energy developers and authorities fail to consider the complexities of the local situation on the ground. Why is Sardinia resisting renewable energy? Roughly the size of New Hampshire, Sardinia juts out of the Mediterranean Sea about 200 kilometers west of Italy’s mainland. Technically it’s part of Italy, but Sardinians are quick to point out their island’s autonomous status—a subtle way of saying, “We do things our way.” Its mountains seem to echo the sentiment. With the highest peaks running in a chain along the east side of the island, Sardinia resolutely turns its back to the mainland. At first glance, the island looks like the kind of place that’s ripe for an energy transition. Its two coal plants are aging and are targeted to be shut down to meet climate commitments. It has no nuclear power, nor does it produce its own natural gas. Wind and sun, however, are abundant and could easily meet the energy needs of Sardinia’s sparse population of about 1.5 million. But while the resources may be ready for a transition, the people emphatically are not. When I first arrive in Sardinia and take in its beauty, I assume that the impetus behind the fight against wind and solar farms boils down to how they look. Waves of silicon, metal, and concrete would spoil views of Sardinia’s stunning beaches, rugged mountains, ancient pastures, and idyllic medieval villages, after all. Residents of the city of Orgosolo in 1969 famously stopped the construction of a military firing range on communal grazing land known as Pratobello. Its village walls are still covered in murals advocating social protest and antiauthoritarianism. Luigi Avantaggiato But the island’s aesthetic—and the tourism industry that depends on it—are only part of the equation. The far stronger cultural forces at play are rooted in Sardinia’s past. Over millennia, the island has endured successive invasions from outsiders seeking to exploit the land. These incursions, and Sardinians’ rebellious responses to them, have become an integral part of the island’s identity passed down through generations. The invasions started with the relatively peaceful settlement of the Phoenicians in the 9th and 8th centuries B.C.E. Then came the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Iberians, who conquered with violence, looting, and enslavement. But legend has it that despite the might of these ancient conquerors, pockets of Sardinia sometimes managed to defend themselves. “Not even the Roman empire could conquer the shepherds of the highland regions,” is the oft-repeated tale. Whether that’s true or just an idealization is beside the point; such stories serve as an enormous source of pride and identity. Sardinia exported about 30 percent of the electricity it generated in 2025, largely to Corsica and the Italian mainland via two existing submarine cables. The island is “fiercely proud of its identity…especially in the center of Sardinia, which was the most resistant part,” says Andrea Vargiu , a sociologist at the University of Sassari in Sardinia. “This long history of exploitation is still in our DNA, along with a proud sense of autonomy,” he says. Sardinia’s unification, in the mid-1800s, with what would become the Kingdom of Italy is seen by many as an act of colonization. It didn’t help that Italy then proceeded to exploit Sardinia’s forests and other resources for the benefit of the mainland—a practice that continued through the 20th century, says Vargiu. Sardinian bandits sometimes fought back with their own sense of justice, settling matters through raids, kidnappings, and violence. Their stories live on in Sardinian lore with an almost mythical quality, the brigands admired for their intractability. Pasquale Mereu, mayor of Orgosolo, helped organize the Pratobello 24 movement against renewable energy in Sardinia. Luigi Avantaggiato Italy’s use of the island for military purposes particularly irked locals. In a famous case in 1969, residents of the town of Orgosolo successfully thwarted the construction of a firing range on communal grazing land known as Pratobello. That name has since become synonymous with the defense of one’s territory, and a rallying cry. “Sardinia has always been a land of conquest,” says Pasquale Mereu, mayor of Orgosolo, who spoke with IEEE Spectrum through an interpreter. “We believe that even today we are still a colony of Italy, and I’m not ashamed to say it even though I represent an institution.” A longstanding mural on one of his village’s walls reads: “You are in the territory of Orgosolo; here the people rule supreme and the government obeys.” Sardinia’s History Shapes its Identity Driving around the island and talking to people, I can feel the weight of Sardinia’s history—and people’s propensity for holding onto it. Elaborate heritage festivals occur nearly every autumn weekend in the island’s interior. They’re well attended, multigenerational affairs that aim to keep old traditions alive. In the medieval town of Belvì, men roast chestnuts— marroni —over an open fire in a frying pan the size of a swimming pool and then serve them to the crowd by shoveling them into troughs. They’re delicious. In an adjacent amphitheater, the crowd sways along to costumed performers leading traditional dances. Then there are the Bronze Age stone structures, called nuraghi, that are pretty much everywhere. Built before the violent conquests, these conical towers have come to symbolize a romanticized vision of the heyday of Sardinia’s independence. More than 7,000 of them remain, ranging from unremarkable piles of rocks to complex towers, each one carefully documented on an interactive online map. I visit one of the more intact ones that’s fenced off and requires an admission fee. As I take some video with my phone, an employee asks me who I am and what I’m doing and informs me I’ll need to get permission from the government before posting anything online. This rock hollowed out by erosion and walled up with stones was likely used by shepherds as a shelter near the historic Sardinian village of Tempio Pausania. Luigi Avantaggiato But in interviews with residents, I’m continually reminded of the darker side of Sardinia’s past. People often bring up painful things that happened 50 or 500 years ago. A middle school science teacher named Giannina Serpi, and her husband, Roberto Moro, meet me at a café in the seaside town of Sant’Antioco. When I ask why people are so opposed to renewable energy, they (like many people I interviewed) point to the 1970s. Sheep return from pasture in Bonorva, Sardinia, near the Bonorva wind farm operated by EDF Renewables. Luigi Avantaggiato That decade brought a new kind of exploitation: not by empires or governments, but by technology companies. Petrochemical, aluminum, and other industrial companies from overseas built factories on the island, creating jobs and adjacent businesses. But after a few decades, economic and geopolitical factors led the companies to close the factories, sinking local economies and in some cases leaving behind toxic contamination. In the northern city of Porto Torres, several petrochemical plants, a thermoelectric power plant, and an industrial harbor employed about 8,000 workers in the early 1970s. But the oil crises of that decade took its toll on jobs, and when environmental contamination became evident in the 1990s, employment plunged further. By 2010, most of the petrochemical plants had closed. Studies show that residents of Porto Torres during that time had curiously high rates of death from cancer, although there is no consensus on the cause. Similarly, studies have found higher rates of lead in children in the Portovesme area in the southwest, about a 20-minute drive from where I sit with Serpi and Moro in Sant’Antioco. There, the U.S. aluminum producer Alcoa operated a smelter that employed about 500 people and supported an estimated 1,500 adjacent jobs. But the company shut down the smelter in 2012. Three years earlier, Russian aluminum manufacturer Rusal had idled its Eurallumina factory nearby. The impacts of these events still feel fresh, Serpi explains through a digital translator. She says she teaches this history to her students but doesn’t tell them how to feel about it. “I let them decide,” she says. Energy Colonialism in Sardinia Against this backdrop, renewable-energy developers in the early 2010s began sizing up Sardinia. They were drawn by the cheap land, low population, strong wind, and sun that shines an average of about 300 days a year. EF Solare Italia commissioned an 11-MW solar plant in 2010. Rome-based Enel Green Power began construction of a 90-MW wind farm in Portoscuso the following year. Other developers followed, and they mostly came from elsewhere—mainland Italy, Europe, and later, China. The way many Sardinians saw it, the new plants didn’t bring many long-lasting jobs. Most of the work ended after the design and installation phases, and profits went back to the companies’ headquarters outside of Sardinia, they argued. People called it “energy colonialism” and lauded landowners who refused to sell or lease their property to developers. Pink granite called Ghiandone Limbara was extracted from the Sinnada quarry in northern Sardinia from the late 1970s to 2011. Luigi Avantaggiato The uncle of Oxford’s Sotgiu is one of those landowners. She says that a couple of years ago a solar company asked him if he would allow the installation of an array on his family farm in Logudoro in Sardinia’s interior. “From that, he would have gotten something around €150,000 a year, which is more money than he’s seen in his life,” says Sotgiu. The money could have covered his three kids’ college education, she says. “But he refused.” He had many reasons. For one, switching from sheep grazing to the more passive business of leasing land would have put the fate of his income in the hands of an outsider. “If you deprive a region of any sort of economy that is self-reliant, then it’s really fragile,” says Sotgiu. Her uncle didn’t trust that the income would last, and worried he’d be left with a ruined farm, she says. Plus, his farm has been in the family for generations and one of his sons is interested in continuing the business. “So I understand his pride in saying, ‘No, this is my farm, I don’t care about the money,’” she says. Sardinia has one of the largest carbon footprints per capita in Europe. Despite that kind of grassroots resistance, development continued. In 2023, the Italian government authorized the construction of a 1-GW submarine power cable to connect Sardinia to Sicily and the Italian mainland. When completed, the bidirectional cable, called the Tyrrhenian Link , will increase electricity exchange between the regions, bolster grid reliability, and help grid operators efficiently use more renewable energy. Sardinian activists, however, view the cable as a way to justify even more construction of wind and solar plants, and to export the island’s energy for the benefit of non-Sardinians. The island already exports about 30 percent of its electricity, largely to Corsica and the Italian mainland via two existing submarine cables. The Florinas wind farm, commissioned in 2004, was one of the earliest wind farms built in Sardinia. Luigi Avantaggiato And then came the tipping point. In June 2024, in an effort to meet the European Union’s 2030 renewable energy targets, Italy committed to building more than 80 GW of new wind and solar energy capacity over December 2020 levels. The national government divvied up the burden among its regions and told Sardinia to build its portion, 6.2 GW. The move triggered an onslaught of requests from wind and solar developers wanting to build projects in Sardinia. The queue at one point topped 50 GW of grid-connection requests. That represented more than 700 solar and wind projects, many of which came from companies outside of Sardinia. The southern newspaper L’ Unione Sarda ran wild with the numbers. Almost daily, for months, it published stories about the “wind assault.” The call-to-arms posts urged people to protest. “The Attack on the Landscape Does Not Stop; The Threat From Agrivoltaics Is Growing,” read a July 2024 headline. Unsubstantiated articles tried to link wind and solar developers to organized crime. “It was scaremongering,” says Sotgiu. “It was a little dishonest, as I saw it, because they kept exaggerating and scaring people into thinking that we were going to be invaded.” (Representatives of the newspaper declined to comment.) The numbers did scare people. Lost was the fact that a grid-connection request is just the start of a multiyear process that involves permitting and legal review and often ends in withdrawn or downsized projects. Submitting a request is inexpensive, and developers often cast a wide net by entering lots of these queues globally to increase the odds of being accepted. In the end, only a fraction come to fruition. In other words, building all, or even most, of the requested 50 GW was never going to happen. “I tried to explain this” to the public, says an industrial engineer at the University of Cagliari, in Sardinia, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid any detrimental impacts of speaking out. “I went to the regional television station. But it’s difficult with technical information. And the newspaper communication is so bad, and its impact is so strong in the community, that it’s very difficult to change people’s minds,” he says. Pratobello 2024 and Anti-Wind Protests And so the collective angst caused by powerful outsiders, industry, and the state united Sardinians into a singular cause. Faced with what felt like another attempted conquest, they did what their families and community had taught them to do: They resisted. Says Mereu: “This is what we are rebelling against: the idea that Sardinians are few and therefore must put up with everything.” In a nod to the 1969 resistance in Orgosolo, they dubbed the movement “Pratobello 2024.” Activist groups, called “committees,” organized protests, and created social media campaigns and videos. Thousands of people started showing up at planned demonstrations. A lawyer went on a hunger strike. Vandals unscrewed bolts on wind turbine blades and set fire to grid and construction equipment. Italy’s transmission system operator, Terna , had to switch to company cars without logos to avoid being targeted. Students studying the electricity system in a master’s program sponsored by Terna were verbally attacked at an airport, according to a professor at their school who spoke with me about the violence. Celebrities got involved. Italian actress and Bond Girl Caterina Murino met with Sardinia’s president to ask her to reject wind farms. Murino posted on Instagram: “Nobody touch Sardinia!!!!” On Italian national TV , the jazz legend Paolo Fresu performed on trumpet while popular TV host Geppi Cucciari read