Italy’s Ministry of Economic Development (MISE) issued on Friday the country’s new energy strategy for the period 2020-2030 (Strategia Energetica Nazionale – SEN), one that is expected to boost the development of solar and renewable energies in the next decade, and to gradually eliminate the share of coal power production by 2025.
Overall, the Italian government expects the share of renewables to increase from around 17.5% currently (the 2020 EU target of 17% was already achieved by the country) to 27% in 2030, which is the same target set by the European Commission for the whole EU in its Winter Package, although the package has not set binding targets for member states.
The 27% target should be reached with around 50% of newly installed capacity coming from PV source. The government, in fact, expects power production from PV to increase from 23 TWh currently to 72 TWh by 2030. Wind power is expected to see an increase from 25 TWh to 40 TWh, while hydroelectric power will see its contribution remain flat at 50 TWh.
According to local renewable energy expert Gianni Silvestrini, in order to achieve the 72 TWh target, new solar installations must exceed 3 GW per year, while totally new PV capacity installations, are estimated at over 30 GW for the 2020-2030 period.
The Italian government, on the other hand, said it believes that the costs of the PV technology will decline by another 40% to 70% over the next decade, while those of wind will fall by between 10% and 25%.
Under the new strategy, large-scale solar, a segment that has seen almost zero growth over the past four years, will receive further support starting from 2020 through a new bidding mechanism.
Italy had approximately 19.6 GW of installed PV capacity at the end of September, according to provisional numbers released by the Italian renewable energy association Anie Rinnovabili. So far this year, the country has installed around 323 MW of new PV systems.
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It seems about 5 years ago that Italy leapt from 3 to 17 GW installed PV capacity in 2 yrs; then stopped dead. I mean, it’s curious that it just stopped so completely dead (well, 2 and a bit GW in 5 yrs – that’s suspended animation at best). Meanwhile, even in a really backward, denialist country like Australia, and with a population about 35% of Italy’s, individual households and small-to-medium businesses have over those same five years installed around 6 GW of roof-top PV – most of Australia’s solar power. I don’t imagine PV panels or installation costs would be much higher in Italy – and I imagine Italian solar would yield pretty good power, generally above 1 MW/yr/installed kw. It just makes household economic sense to generate your own electricity instead of paying big power companies. There must be some kind of cultural difference, people just not being aware of the possibilities. I wonder why PV companies and environmental activists don’t get out there and make them aware. In that context, these 3 GW+ per year are, if not spectacular, better than a kick in the head.
@Misha Sibirsk
The main cause for the rise and fall in expansion of renewable energies in Italy is that the government under Mario Monti announced that, to cut public spending and come closer to an overall balanced public budget, all public co-financing in installation of PVs would be dramatically cut in a couple years. This caused a great rush for many people to be able to use public funds before the deadline, followed by a drastic fall in new installations after the deadline passed. While I imagine costs would be pretty much comparable between Italy and Australia, it seems apparent that taking charge of 100% of the costs is not yet seen as economically sound for the majority of the Italians.