Dispatch from Italy | July 2024

• The outlook for the rollout of renewable energies remains contradictory in Italy. A recent decree has tightened rules for the deployment of PV on agricultural land, and the new eligible areas bill (Decreto Aree Idonee), which was passed a few weeks ago, set new criteria for the installation of renewables projects. The new guidelines encourage installation on warehouses, in parking lots and in industrial areas, but limit the mixing of PV and agriculture, which has disappointed both companies and environmentalist parties. 
• The government is also expected to adopt its Renewable Energy Act (Testo Unico sulle Rinnovabili) in the weeks before the summer break. Over the past decade, one of the main reasons for the slow pace of wind and photovoltaic deployment was the extensive bureaucracy required to get permissions. This includes the challenge of getting permits from different stakeholders, such as commissions, ministries and municipalities. Up to five years can pass between the first application and the commissioning of a renewable energy installation. With this new law, bureaucratic procedures will be simplified and merged into a single law. There will be three different permitting processes, depending on the facility’s size and location. A single digital application platform, called SUER, will also be created.
• According to the Greens, who scored a surprisingly good result in the European elections, these new regulations create “a perverse entanglement and effectively put an end to any possibility of developing renewables on agricultural land, including uncultivated land” – even though renewable industry associations, such as Italia Solare, consider agri-PV crucial for Italy's energy transition. 
• Certain sections of Italy’s environmentalist movement are also disappointed with the regulations, but for different reasons. Some activists, academics and organisations fear that easy access to land for renewable projects threatens the landscape and soil integrity. Paolo Pileri, a professor of land use planning at Milan’s Politecnico, lamented what he called an over-simplification of procedures, arguing that it “will please the supporters of a fast transition at any cost (as long as panels and turbines are not installed next to their holiday homes by the sea or in the mountains).” Pileri warned that the new rules could open the door to a new wave of green speculators, and inflict damage on people who will have to give up land to accommodate renewables, or who will have to tolerate a wind farm in their vicinity. “We are letting these new administrative standards override sound environmental criteria,” Pileri said. His point of view is common in Italy, where grassroots movements oppose what they call “industrial-scale renewables” almost everywhere in the country, from Umbria to Sardinia.

The latest from Italy – last month in recap

• Italy has submitted the final text of its National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) to the European Union. Following the European Commission's initial rebuke of the original text, the revision took more than a year. Italy does not have a climate law, so this document by the environment and energy security ministry is the main roadmap for the country’s decarbonisation path. The government plans to reach 131 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by 2030: 79.2 GW of photovoltaics, 28.1 GW of wind, 19.4 GW of hydro, 3.2 GW of bioenergy and 1 GW of geothermal. 
• The most newsworthy section of the NECP concerns nuclear energy. Italy phased out nuclear power and stopped any further development following a referendum in 1987 shortly after the Chernobyl disaster. That decision had been left untouched since then. In 2011, the government of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi tried to restart the debate around nuclear energy with a new referendum, but the initiative was again voted down. The government programme now includes a significant quota for nuclear energy: Depending on the scenario, the government predicts that nuclear power could contribute between 11 percent and 22 percent of total power in 2050. The technologies of choice will be small modular reactors (SMRs), advanced modular reactors (AMRs) and micro reactors, with a capacity of 0.4 GW by 2035, 2 GW by 2040, 3.5 GW by 2045 and 7.6 GW by 2050, under the less ambitious scenario. However, none of these novel reactor designs are commercially viable yet anywhere in the world.
• According to an analysis of Italy’s nuclear ambitions conducted by journalist Luca Zorloni in Wired, “there is no clear indication of how the government wants to achieve the goal of getting 8 GW, about 11 percent of projected national needs, from fission by 2050. Nor how this scenario, considered conservative, could result in savings of 17 billion euros compared to an investment in renewables alone.” The details, according to the government, will be spelled out in a new plan scheduled for 2025. Zorloni recalls that the International Energy Agency (IEA) considers lifetime extensions of existing nuclear power plants an indispensable part of keeping this source in the energy mix - but this option is not available in Italy, because its nuclear power plants have been closed for 30 years. Without extending the lifetime of old plants, the IEA scenario reduces nuclear power's contribution to electricity supply to three percent - "far below the targets Italy has set,” Zorloni says. It is also worth noting that Italy has been looking for more than a decade without success to find a location for a national nuclear waste repository (which at present is mainly waste from medical applications), and has not even completed the decommissioning of the plants that were closed after the 1987 referendum.
• Even though environment minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said he was pleased with the NECP, which was drafted based on consultations with hundreds of companies, research centres, universities and other ministries, the reception by civil society has been less welcoming. Energy and climate think tank Ecco Climate said it was “full of inadequacies that weigh on the country's development.” In its review, Ecco said the plan not only lacked a general vision for the country's energy transition and economic transformation, but also a serious strategy for moving away from fossil fuels. According to the Ecco analysts, electrification is not used at all as a lever for decarbonisation, and some solutions are not aligned with the climate goals. For example, the plan still contains support for using gas for heating buildings, and for using combustion engines in transportation. 
• Leading environmental organisations (Greenpeace Italy, Legambiente, WWF Italy, Kyoto Club, and Transport & Environment) have issued a joint reaction, in which they predict that the NECP will “slow down the transition with unnecessary public investment in unfeasible, expensive technologies that pose serious environmental problems.” They also describe the inclusion of nuclear energy in the government's plans as “irrational.”
• A wide network of environmental organisations, labour unions, research centres and the association of small municipalities submitted an alternative plan to the NECP, which envisions an Italy free of both fossil and nuclear power that is entirely powered by renewables. In addition to a faster rollout of renewables, the manifesto calls for grid upgrades, investments in efficiency and storage systems, and harshly dismisses the Italian government's nuclear vision. The network members will meet in the autumn to promote their vision.

Ferdinando’s picks - Highlights from upcoming events and top reads

• One of Italy's best-known climate activists, energy engineer Giovanni Ludovico Montagnani, who is also a mountaineer, suffered an accident while rock climbing near Lake Maggiore in northern Italy two years ago. He has chronicled his long and painful healing process on social media, in a blog and now in a new book entitled Dopo l'incidente (After the Accident). I recommend it because Montagnani draws insightful parallels between his physical recovery, which in the first days after the accident seemed almost impossible, and Italy's energy transition, which sometimes appears to be just as complicated. The book can also be read as a personal memoir describing a post-traumatic rebirth, and as a chronicle of a country that still has the potential for a successful transition, despite the difficulties. The book's subtitle is 'What if everything works out better than expected?'
• The workers’ occupation of a factory owned by car industry supplier GKN in Campi Bisenzio, Florence, is the longest such event in Italy’s history. On 9 July 2021, the workers were laid off en masse overnight as production was moved out of Europe. At the time, GKN mainly produced parts for Italy’s luxury sportscar brand Maserati. The workers did not accept the decision, and have been garrisoning the plant in a stand-off with the owner ever since – a conflict lasting three years now. They demand public intervention to restart production, and a switch from the automotive supply chain to the energy transition sector. Over the years, the occupation has been one of the most fertile grassroot protests in Italy. The workers have joined forces with climate movements (to see unions and environmentalists on the same side is very uncommon for Italy), organised working-class literature festivals, and above all, they have drawn up an actual industrial plan to start producing photovoltaic panels and cargo bikes inside the factory, in collaboration with a group of supportive academics from the University of Pisa. On 12 July, they organised an overnight demonstration in the streets of Florence’s city centre with thousands of participants. Their struggle is an interesting example for popular participation as a driving force in the energy transition.
• In Italy, mafia organisations also have serious environmental impacts. Every year, Legambiente publishes the Ecomafie Report to update the tally of ecological destruction caused by criminal organisations, particularly in the main regions of southern Italy: Campania, Sicily, Puglia and Calabria. The report counts 35,487 environmental offenses in 2023, up 15.6 percent from the previous year. The most common crimes affect cement production, waste disposal and biodiversity (poaching, illegal fishing, as well as trafficking of protected species and pets).