Bureaucracy vs renewable energy. This is nothing new, but now the slow play has a particularly harmful and perverse effect. Never as in this phase of skyrocketing final energy prices, but above all of a projection also for the future of upward trending prices, the race for renewable energy plants progressively increases its convenience. With the complicity, it should be remembered, of a continuous reduction in the installation and operating costs of green energies, especially photovoltaics.
Cheaper renewable energies but bureaucracy holds them back
But how much convenience really grows green energies? And how does it keep curbing bureaucracy? Testimonies, even very recent ones, are not lacking. On the first front, that of the growth of profitability in investments in renewables, a significant confirmation comes from Rystad Energy, a Norwegian research institute highly regarded by industry analysts and which operates from offices all over the world, from America to the Emirates, from Russia to Japan. With current spot electricity prices, a medium-large or large utility-scale photovoltaic park will pay for itself in less than a year, claims the research institute in its latest report, in which it points out that this year in the world is investing more in renewable energies than in the hydrocarbon (Oil & Gas) chain: almost 500 billion dollars in total investment in 2022 in the first case, less than 450 billion in hydrocarbons.
The convenience of renewable energies is growing: that's why
Possible objection: the tensions on asset prices could be momentary and largely reabsorbed, as the signals of these days seem to show. Counter-objection: the comparison between the economics of renewables and traditional electricity generation nonetheless marks a trend of structural advantages in favor of the former, with a price of traditional electricity generation which inevitably tends to increase in perspective. This will happen - analysts estimate - in the case of recourse to the hydrocarbons, but also with a new drive tonuclear energy, considering that the investment and operating costs of nuclear power plants are today markedly increased compared to those of the past decades also due to the new mandatory safety parameters both in the construction of infrastructures and in operation.
The research institute takes the situation in Germany as a benchmark for its estimates on photovoltaics, but things are not very different from us. Indeed, the greater solar yield of our country makes us earn a few fractions more in the convenience index. Rystad Energy analysts venture a truly captivating estimate: with current spot prices a photovoltaic park pays for itself in less than a year. And this happens – analysts estimate – not only in Germany but also in France, Italy and England.
It is worth emphasizing that last September the average of the Italian Pun (the single national price of electricity resulting from transactions on the power exchange) just dropped to 429 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) compared to the even higher peaks of the previous period (the result, as we know, of tensions on international markets but also of the scarce contribution of hydroelectric power in Italy), which in any case represents a multiple of the price levels of a couple of years ago. And even with a partial normalization of increases in energy raw materials, the research institute's projections show a level of convenience of investments in photovoltaics markedly growing compared to the past.
Guaranteed earnings even after the price emergency
To give maximum concreteness to its indications, the Research Institute estimates a realistic price of our wholesale electricity (Pun) in the future, settled at the level of 180 euros per megawatt hour, in any case higher than the levels of the recent past. In this case the return of investment on a photovoltaic park, however, it would not exceed five years. Still a great deal.
Translate these estimates in the case of small individual systems set up by private individuals on their homes is not very simple but neither is it impossible: if in the period preceding the last crisis in final energy prices an investment in a small-scale photovoltaic system with on-the-spot metering guaranteed a return on investment in any case less than 10 years in perspective convenience increases by at least 25%.
But here's the sore side of the scenario: i bureaucratic brakes authorisation, very conspicuous in the case of medium and large "speculative" plants, but which are even increasing in the case of small plants by individual consumer-producers. In the first case (medium-large sized industrial plants) the brakes are known and show no signs of abating, despite the promises of the governments that are following one another: infinite complications in the forms, slalom between the sworn statements, the authorizations not only for urban planning but also for the environment and landscape . With a process that in a significant part of the cases is studded with disputes and appeals that precipitate in the well-known Italian judicial delays.
A "chain" of obstacles for small and large plants
But even in the case of small private plants, traps are the order of the day. Letters to newspapers and specialized sites are multiplying from citizens forced to wait months and months between the installation of photovoltaic panels and their connection to the network. It should be remembered in this regard that the current legislation strictly prohibits the commissioning of solar panels installed with the incentive mechanisms of building renovations and on-the-spot metering before the connection to the public network has been completed. which entails the completion of all the procedures concerning relations with the GSE (the Energy Services Manager who "governs" the energy flows and the fees to be assigned) and the installation and activation by the energy distributor of the exchange.
A complex and in many cases insidious operation which, according to the testimonies of both citizens and installer companies, are even undergoing additional brakes compared to previous years, with an inevitable practice block even in the case of minor malfunctions in the exchange of documentation. Responsibilities are not easy to assign. And in many cases they undeservedly end up falling on the first direct interlocutor of whoever is installing a system – i.e. Enel/E-Distribuzione – which, however, represents only one link in the chain of bureaucracy that continues to hold back the sector.
Oiling the mechanisms really helps everyone. A reminder of the strong attention of the government that is being formed is a must.
