Project Finance Copying and distributing are prohibited without permission of the publisher

Green frenzy

19 December 2008

Italian wind deals are being signed with healthy bank margins and the solar PV activity in Puglia looks set to spread to Sicily. But generous incentive regimes mask permitting issues and cooling political interest. Paul Smith reports.

The Puglia regional government in Southern Italy has been crawling with photovoltaic developers over the last year, but as one Rome-based lawyer says, "for every 10 solar proposals we are receiving, only about two are bankable".

The Puglia region had enacted a regional law that fast-tracked the authorisation procedure for small photovoltaic (PV) projects. The region held that PV projects under 1MW capacity would be subject to the dichiarazione di inizio di attività (DIA) provisions. Applicants under the DIA can avoid the single authorisation procedure of central government that, among other things, requires an independent environmental impact assessment.

The Conto Energia

Under the Conto Energia, or new solar law, introduced by central government, Italy has one of the most hospitable feed-in tariffs for solar PV in Europe: the tariffs for installations over 20kW are Eu0.36 ($0.49) per kWh for fixed and tracking units installed on the ground and Eu0.44 per...


Upcoming Events

Change font size: Switch to default font size Switch to medium font size Switch to large font size