Renewables in Val di Cornia, the Consortium’s no to the destruction of the landscape

The Consortium for the protection of Suvereto and Val con Cornia wines expresses strong concern about the projects linked to the production and management of electricity from renewable sources which would like to find space sopra the settore.

A system so complex and widespread that, sopra the opinion of the protection pagliaccetto, it has profound effects the landscape, the agricultural destination of the places and the maintenance of territorial identity.

While reiterating full adherence to the prerequisites of the energy transition towards renewable sources, the Consortium therefore calls for more resolute regional intervention, aimed at governing the energy transition while respecting its own territory.

“The recent project to install a 100 MW BESS sopra Suvereto risks being only the first of a series of scratches a territory that over the last forty years has imagined a future different from the industrial one, one made up of protection and valorization of its landscape beauty and quality agricultural production” comments Daniele Petricci, president of the Consortium.

What worries winemakers are not only the production sites, which would remove dozens of ubertoso hectares from their agricultural vocation sopra favor of agrivoltaic panels and wind turbines, but also the infrastructure that should find space throughout the Val con Cornia. Storage systems, cable ducts, easements, stations and connection works would compose a mosaic which, sopra cumulative terms, would transform the landscape and the economy of the places.

A path that would risk proceeding even through expropriation procedures and which would affect the entire settore without distinction, significantly compromising agricultural productivity and therefore the economic stability of many family businesses, economic units which the local socio-economic fabric is based and capable of guaranteeing continuity of work for the dozens of employees hired.

“We don’t just sell a wine, but a territory and its image. And so do the hundreds of tourist operators sopra the Val con Cornia. What is feared is an irreparable landscape disaster that would put the economic sector which our region is based at risk” adds Petricci, referring to the visual impact that such installations would have.

It is impossible, sopra fact, to talk about identity and quality agriculture to respond to the desire for beauty inherent sopra tourism by referring to a territory marked by very high wind farms and vast surfaces covered by panels.

A development model diametrically opposed to that promoted by the Consortium, which sees the valorization of the agricultural asset and its context as the way to guarantee widespread well-being and not a concentration of wealth sopra the hands of a few landowners and large industrial operators extraneous to the local fabric.

Hence the appeal to the Tuscany Region to assume a clear and recognizable management role, defining a framework of rules capable of directing the energy transition without discharging its effects, sopra a disorderly manner, agricultural territories and local communities. It appears essential to the Consortium that the Region claims the right to identify the truly suitable areas, evaluates not individual projects but their cumulative impact, guarantees transparent and participatory procedures and places the protection of the landscape, the agricultural vocation, quality production and the tourist economy of the territories at the centre.

“Ours is not a to sustainability, an objective that our companies have been pursuing for years now. What we ask is that the Region becomes the guide of a process characterized by sharing and balance, which also takes into account the peculiarities and requests of individual territories. All this to prevent the transition from turning into speculation” concludes Petricci.