Fabrizio Cardinali, aged 72, does not crave bright city lights. In fact, he has no use for electricity and has lived entirely off the grid for more than half a century. That makes him one of the few people in Europe unconcerned about rising energy costs this winter.

Cardinali, whose long white beard makes him look like Karl Marx, the poet Walt Whitman or a slimmed-down Santa Claus, lives in a stone farmhouse in the hills of the Verdicchio wine country near Ancona, on Italy’s eastern Adriatic coast. By choice, he has no electricity, gas or indoor plumbing.