Le new installations of wind and photovoltaic energy they will no longer have to threaten the landscape. The search for a territorial balance between the growth of renewables and respect for the environment has perhaps taken the right path to overcome denials, protests and oppositions of all kinds. The Ministries of Culture and Ecological Transition are, in fact, defining new rules to speed up the construction of new plants.
The announcement came from the Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini that with the Minister of Transition, Roberto Cingolani, worked on a new definition of the areas suitable for receiving the next investments.
Il aid decreei, adopted to respond to the crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine, has reclassified as suitable all areas that are not restricted and do not fall within the buffer distance from the protected property.
"With Minister Cingolani we are working to achieve a balance between landscape protection and the need to increase energy capacity from renewable sources - said Franceschini - both because it is an obligation of the EU but also because it is right". On the other hand, after entering the Constitution the protection of the environment and biodiversity, by revising articles 9 and 41, sooner or later a practical application had to arrive. Anyway, the suitable areas already identified to grow renewables I'm:
- sites where plants from the same source are already installed and where non-substantial modifications are carried out,
- areas of sites subject to reclamation identified according to the rules of the Environmental Code,
- quarries and mines closed or in conditions of environmental degradation,
- sites and plants belonging to the State Railways.
To these, the Aid decree adds “le areas not affected by the presence of properties subject to protection pursuant to the Cultural Heritage Code (Legislative Decree 42/2004), nor falling within the range of respect for the assets protected pursuant to the second part or article 136 of the same Legislative Decree 42/2004”.
The Aid Decree will reduce the time required for authorisations
The Aid decree also brings important changes to the so-called buffer zone - which should extinguish any controversy over the degradation of the landscape - distinguished between wind farms and photovoltaic plants.
According to the text, in the case of wind farms, "buffer zone means the area of the circle with a radius equal to thirty times the maximum height of each wind turbine and in any case with a radius of no less than three thousand metres, which includes in whole or in part assets subject to protection".
For photovoltaic systems, the buffer zone is represented by a distance of one thousand meters from the perimeter of protected assets.
According to the intentions of the Government, the entry into force of the new rules, will reduce the authorization terms by a third.
In recent weeks, the Minister of Ecological Transition has been managing permits and authorizations for the production of electricity through hydroelectric storage and pumping systems and marine wind farms, in Puglia, Calabria and Sardinia.
Finally, the Aid decree provides for important innovations for the agricultural, forestry and rural areas. In detail, companies in the agricultural, livestock and agro-industrial sectors will be able to create photovoltaic systems on the roofs of their production facilities having power exceeding the average annual consumption of electricity, including household consumption. Thanks to these new plants, it will be possible to reduce the consumption of polluting fuels over time. For the same sectors, we recall that the National Recovery and Resilience Plan also allocates 1,5 billion euros with the Call Agricultural Park.
