Italian permitting law changes to free up new renewable power

LONDON (ICIS)–Up to 20GW of renewable energy capacity could come online in Italy when provisions contained in a decree aimed at streamlining the country’s permitting procedures comes into force, according to Lorenzo Parola, partner at Herbert Smith Freehills.

The simplification decree was published in Italy’s official journal after being approved by the cabinet on 28 May. It is currently undergoing parliamentary scrutiny before being converted to law.

The decree contains four main changes which could help spur renewable expansion:

– The environment impact evaluation will last no longer than 130 days for projects in the domestic recovery and national energy and climate plans.

– The option for developers to address a single authority if any of the administrative steps fail to provide the needed responses

– The establishment of a special committee working full-time on key energy projects. This should speed up projects that have stalled recently.

– Renewable projects of less than 10MW built on industrial land will not have to undergo environmental evaluations and will be authorised by means of a simple procedure.

But Parola said some essential permitting issues will still not be addressed by the law.

For photovoltaic and hydropower plants, the law removes the need for an environmental impact assessment if the plant size, layout and volumes are unchanged. But Parola said this was unlikely to happen.

“Every time you replace some outdated solar panels the size and shape of the new ones will be inevitably different. The effect is that any intervention would be qualified by the relevant region or municipality as a substantial variation and be subject to a very strict and long procedure,” he said.

He said the decree also fails to scale back the role of local subsidiaries of the ministry of cultural heritage, activities and tourism (MIBACT). Local bodies have often been hostile to renewable projects.

“They [local bodies] should intervene only when there are territorial constraints, but the new legislation allows them to have a say even when the territory at stake only borders with a protected area,” Parola said.

If the law fails to free up Italy’s permitting process, attaining binding climate targets will remain difficult.

The piece of legislation is the second attempt to streamline bureaucratic permitting procedures in only one year, after the proposal submitted by the Conte II cabinet last summer was considered insufficient.

The decree is also considered to be a structural reform pivotal to achieve both the recovery plan and the national energy and climate plan, two legislative efforts setting out the roadmap for the country to reach intermediate 2030 climate targets.

By Federica Di Sario