As Managing Director of CCE Italia with its pipeline of 2.488MWp and as someone who has been navigating the Italian PV-sector for more than 15 years now, I feel deeply deceived by the Italian Government and by its current decision makers, who prove to be much more interested in pursuing shortsighted political interests than long-term, collective ones, as testified by two bad news that the Italian PV sector has recently received.
On one side, the new Sardinian regional Government has approved an 18 month moratorium – which must be now examined and approved by the Regional Council – on the realization of new renewable energy plants in the region. On the other side, the Agriculture Minister Lollobrigida and the Environment and Energy Minister Pichetto Fratin presented a decree-law which intended to strongly restrict the installation of ground-mounted PV systems. The two Ministers reached an agreement on the text after an initial, far more restrictive formulation was presented by Minister Lollobrigida and strongly criticized by stakeholders.
The decree-law has now come into force. Anyway, it needs to be converted in law by the Parliament, which has 60 days to change and approve it. I strongly hope - and wish - that changes will be done, as the current text is still unclear and excessively open to interpretation.
„Companies and stakeholders struggle with a lack of regulatory certainty“
In addition to this, in Italy we are still waiting for the so called Decreto Aree Idonee (Law Decree on Suitable Areas), a law decree which should define once for all which areas in Italy are to be considered suitable for the installation of ground-mounted PV systems and which not. Until then, each region takes its own decisions on the matter, generating a very complex, fragmented national landscape.
The events of the past two weeks have highlighted a persistent problem in the PV Italian sector: in their daily work, companies and stakeholders struggle with a lack of regulatory certainty and spend huge amounts of time in striving to work their way through ever-changing rules. In this way, the best energies of qualified and skilled people who work in the sector risk to be wasted and, with them, many valuable resources.
CCE Italia
The Ministers’ approach to the new decree-law on ground-mounted PV systems makes it clear to me that the Government doesn’t intend to support a sector which is crucial to the country’s economic growth and to the future of its agriculture and population – and to the ecological transition. When it comes to ground-mounted PV, current Italian politicians, for unknown reasons which are hard to understand – and, perhaps, ill-advised by some associations – distinguish themselves for a fear-driven approach and seem determined to spread misinformation on the topic. But we need clarity if we want to prevent a distorted perception of solar energy systems from spreading among people, with all its negative consequences: distorted information is an obstacle to the fight against the climate crisis.
Facts and figures on agricultural land in Italy
While politicians say they want to protect agricultural land from the “wild” sprading of PV panels, facts and figures tell us there is no need to do so. Let’s have a look at the data on agricultural land in my country according to Ispra (Institute for Environment Research and Protection):
- available agricultural area: 16.6 mln hectares
- utilised agricultural area: 12.4 mln hectares
- unused/abandoned agricultural area: 4.2 mln hectares
- agricultural are abandoned every year: + 120 thousand hectares.
According to Italia Solare (a leading Italian organization solely dedicated to PV and technology integration for smart energy management), to reach Italy's minimum targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, 43 Gigawatts (GW) of new photovoltaic installations are required. To produce this capacity, we need a surface of about 56 thousand hectares, 30% of which could be realized on rooftops. This means that to meet national goals for 2030, we just need 39 thousand hectares of agricultural land for solar parks, a surface equivalent to:
- 1/3 of the agricultural area that is no longer cultivated each year and thus becomes abandoned;
- 0.9% of the total agricultural area loss;
- 0.24% of the total agricultural area.
In addition to this, the last report of GSE (the Energy Services Manager) on Italian ground-mounted PV tells us that in 2023 only 16.400 hectares of land were occupied by ground-mounted PV panels – a very little share of the total. Moreover, it has been calculated that energy produced by PV-utility scale plants costs one third of the electricity generated by residential rooftop PV-systems.
Moving from these figures, it seems clear to me that when Italian politicians speak about protecting agricultural land from consumption generated by solar parks, they are making up a problem that doesn’t exist.
„Ground-mounted PV plants are not enemies to agriculture“
Those who have the power to take decisions should focus on giving certain and long-term rules to provide the best law framework to a sector that is already a huge driver for the Italian economy - and which, with clear rules, can become the leading economic sector in Italy – rather than supporting a biased perspective on ground-mounted PV.
After so many years of missing political action on simplifying our regulatory framework to make it more efficient, one can’t help but wonder if this inaction, rather than negligence, reflects a precise intention: the intention not to foster a sector whose success would make energy production more widespread and, thus, more democratic.
What our decision makers need to understand is that ground-mounted PV plants are not enemies to agriculture: much more, in a moment in which the climate crisis faces farmers with even bigger challenges in terms of water scarcity, extreme heat and other extreme weather events, PV and agri-PV are agriculture’s and farmers’ best allies. Proven data and facts shouldn’t be ignored to pursue political, short-term interests. (SE/hcn)
