In compliance with decree 199/2021 which transposes the RED II directive, the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security is working on the implementing decree which must regulate the subject of suitable areas and indicate the distribution of the RES national objective between the Italian Regions. This document reports the activities carried out to support the institutions during the revision of the first draft decree presented to the Regions in 2023, including an update of the regional objectives, according to the revised national target provided in the Italian NECP, and the transposition of the observations received during the consultation phase.

The activities have highlighted some critical issues, such as unsuitable buffer zones around cultural heritage (for wind energy), and the delineation of PDO and PGI areas (for non-advanced agrivoltaic power plants), which should be addressed to obtain a coherent and definitive text. Moreover, in-depth studies were conducted to evaluate the impact of the discipline on suitable areas on regional planning strategies, with a case study targeted to the Piedmont Region, as well as on the response of the operators, with an analysis of the large wind and photovoltaic project proposals presented to the EIA National commission.

The study on the Piedmont Region discusses the availability of suitable areas resulting from the application of the main criteria envisaged by the decree and provides a decision-making tool that allows the user to perform different land exploitation scenarios to achieve the RES regional objective. As regards the analysis of the projects, the results highlight a gap between the interest of the operators (mainly focused on Puglia, Sicily, Sardinia and Basilicata) and the regional objectives, as well as an unexpected interest towards offshore wind source.

The study also presents a comparison between the location of plants and the availability of potentially suitable areas, including, in the case of offshore wind, a preliminary estimate of these areas, based on the integration of wind resources data, geomorphology and sea uses derived from the Italian Maritime Spatial Planning.

Finally, a methodology is proposed to detect abandoned agricultural land by means of satellite imagery, to be considered for the installation of photovoltaic systems.

The document is available on the site in Italian