The Italian government has opened a consultation on a new decree that seeks to introduce a new subsidy scheme for renewables and back 62 GW of projects via competitive tenders in 2024-2028.
The proposal will be open to public comments until September 18, the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security announced earlier this week.
The RES X plan calls for the country to open tenders for 62.2 GW of projects larger than 1 MW, with the capacity to be spread across different technologies such as solar, wind, gas purification and hydropower. The largest portion of the total is set aside for solar photovoltaic (PV) projects, for which 45 GW will be available, while support will be also offered for 15 GW of wind projects.
The proposal includes the introduction of incentive tariffs for energy produced from renewables, with direct access to the mechanism to be given to projects smaller than 1 MW in size. Additionally, the permitting process for projects larger than 10 MW will be simplified and accelerated.
With the new decree Italy aims to back its energy transition in line with the EU objectives and reach its recently updated goal for sourcing 65% of its electricity from renewables by 2030, against an earlier target of 55%. The country will also seek to make renewables account for 40% of gross energy consumption across all sectors by the end of the decade.
In line with the upgraded goals, Italy plans to expand its installed renewable energy capacity to 131 GW by 2030 from 58 GW at end-2021. Last year, 2.48 GW of solar and 0.5 GW of wind farms were brought online.