Mafia and multinationals milk Italy's green energy boom

Narbolia, Italy

THOUSANDS of solar panels glint in the sun, but the prized farmland beneath lies barren. While the Italian island of Sardinia revels in a renewable energy boom, the long arm of organised crime risks sullying its clean power ambitions.

Famed for its lush plains and emerald waters, but racked by poverty and unemployment, Sardinia has jumped at the chance to boost the economy by converting its long months of sunshine into green energy.

And it is not alone: Cities and towns across Italy are embracing hydroelectric power, geothermal energy, wind farms, solar panels, steam generators and biomass plants, due largely to generous state subsidies.

In Sardinia's north-west, the crop from purple and golden fields of thistles and sunflowers is used to generate biomass energy, while on the rolling hills in the island's centre, towering white turbines spin gently in the b…