There is a wonderful landscape in the territory of Alà dei Sardi, but anyone who lifts their eyes to admire it would almost prefer not to. Because if the boy from Via Gluck was forced to go to the city to breathe concrete, in the earthly paradise between Alà dei Sardi and Buddusò it is the concrete that has invaded those who simply wanted to keep walking barefoot through the fields without running into a wind turbine. And here, there are almost SEVENTY of them.
So I went back home and started researching to understand whether it’s really worth touching a place like this. Why? How do people benefit from it? What advantages do they receive in exchange for such a high price?
What I found is that the wind farm between Alà dei Sardi and Buddusò is one of the largest in Italy and can produce about 330 GWh per year.¹
And that according to a 2025 analysis by CRENoS, Sardinia produces more electricity than it consumes.² That, according to L’Unione Sarda, part of this energy is exported off the island. We produce 12,563.1 GWh but consume only 7,636.9.³
Then I found that, even though we produce more than we consume, our energy bills keep getting higher, much higher than the Italian average.⁴
The mayor of Buddusò said in 2022 that the municipality invests the money from the wind farm (about 900,000 euros per year) in “services”.⁵
But where does all this energy go?
We don’t know exactly, but judging by the lack of concrete benefits, it doesn’t seem to come back to us.
Here’s how it works: the energy produced by the wind turbines is fed into the national grid, where it mixes with all the energy produced in Italy. It’s impossible to determine where, when, or how much goes to whom. It’s like putting salt in a pot of soup and then trying to take it back out: it would require detailed analysis, and we don’t have it.
What we do have is what you see in this photo: an extraordinary landscape, rich in impressive nuragic sites, devastated from a landscape, archaeological, and cultural point of view, all to proudly claim that the benefits are the following: 17 Sardinian workers for maintenance, slightly lower taxes, and a few “services”.⁶
Whether these benefits are real, or just vague political statements, we cannot know: there is no public data proving it.
And the wind farm in Alà and Buddusò is not the exception but the model: Sardinia is full of them, and the Region keeps receiving new connection requests while more and more Sardinians don’t even want to hear about it anymore.⁷
There are currently 325 wind power installations in Sardinia,⁸ and more than 800 (EIGHT HUNDRED) new requests for connection of renewable energy plants have been submitted to the national grid.⁹
This means that, if these requests were approved, Sardinia would once again become what it has never stopped being: a land used, crossed, and drained by those who come from outside, while it is left only with the wounds.
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1 https://www.ingdemurtas.it/eolico/installato-in-sardegna/?utm_source
7 https://www.fanpage.it/attualita/perche-in-sardegna-nessuno-vuole-lenergia-eolica/?utm_source
