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Italian government scraps retroactive PV measures

Italy’s government has backtracked on a retroactive measure it was looking to impose on photovoltaic installations located on agricultural land.

The retoractive measure will not be applied.

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Italian photovoltaic association, GIFI’s Federico Brucciani has confirmed to pv magazine that while incentives shall still be halted for photovoltaic systems larger than one megawatt (MW) on agricultural land, the deadline by which such systems must fulfill the feed-in tariff (FIT) requirements, will be moved back to March 29. He added that more exact news will be available next week.

It was announced on January 27 that the government was looking to apply a retroactive measure to Article 65 of Law Decree n. 1/2012 ("Decreto Monti"). Originally, the Decreto Monti, which stipulates that photovoltaic plants over one MW in size on agricultural land cannot apply for a FIT, was supposed to have come into play on March 29, 2012. However, the decree was brought into effect early after being published in Italy’s Official Journal on January 24.

Had it passed into law, it would have meant that project developers would have had to have already met the requirements laid out in Article 10, paragraph’s 4 and 5, of the Legislative Decree n. 28/2011 ("Decreto Romani"), by January 24.

Under the Decreto Romani requirements, photovoltaic systems on agricultural land must: (i) not exceed one MW; (ii) have a minimum distance of two kilometers from privately owned land; and (iii) not occupy more than 10 percent of the available land.

Read Italy: The rules of the game, published in pv magazine’s March edition for a more in-depth look at the current Italian photovoltaic market situation.