Fishes, red sludge, and wind in the Mediterranean. An ethnography of overturnings in the EU energy transition

Bibliographic Data

ID21720185
AuthorsElena Apostoli Cappello (0000-0003-3395-8437, Université Libre de Bruxelles, corresponding author)
Year2026
Publication date2026-06-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1466-1381 • E-ISSN: 1741-2714
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14661381261452963
OpenAlexW7165961841
LanguageEN
References cited18

This article takes Sulcis, a Sardinian ex-mining sub-region, as a case study, and aims to place it in a regional dimension, analyzing local attitudes and opposition to EU energy transition policies against a background of industrial and environmental crises. Here the Green Deal-promoted energy transitions taking place involve a whole industrial system of carbon-dependent and coal-fired steel processing, which is the target of a large national plan to convert it into a regional-scale platform for onshore and offshore wind farms. Focusing on local opposition, the article shows a new kind of case study, a transition still in progress, suggesting that spaces classified as peripheral in anthropological studies on energy are in fact new centers of transition. When discussing energy speculation, local opposition likens the mechanisms of landscape grabbing—or seascape grabbing—to land grabbing. Local opposition to mega wind farms is supported by a deeper political opposition, which questions the very legitimacy of European institutions to govern transitions at the local level. Different local temporalities are intertwined in this process, overlapping experiences of dispossession

Commons · Energy transition · Ethnography · Legitimacy · Local government · Opposition (politics) · Political ecology · Politics · Seascape · Temporalities · Mining and Resource Management · Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance

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