Italia Solare asks for 'immediate change of pace' on PV to reduce reliance on Russian gas

• Italy should increase the authorisation of brand-new solar projects to reduce the country's dependence on imports of Russian gas, the head of state of sector trade organization Italia Solare has actually claimed.

" An immediate change of pace is required" to authorize PV plants and enable them to be developed, Paolo Rocco Viscontini wrote in a letter sent this week to Italian President Sergio Mattarella, as he required "rapid, concrete and terse initiatives" to change the nation's energy paradigm.

With Italy importing around 40% of its gas from Russia, Rocco Viscontini claimed the circumstance in Ukraine calls for an "urgent revision" of Italy's energy system "for honest, economic as well as national safety and security factors".

He added that there has actually been a lack of political wish recently to unblock authorisations for new solar plants.

In part because of strict allowing constraints, Italy deployed simply 800MW of solar in 2014, taking its total set up capacity as much as 22GW.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi stated earlier today that the country have to remain to streamline procedures for renewables. "This is the significant challenge for onshore and overseas renewable resource projects; we are continuing to do this and we will certainly remain to press this factor."

Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Draghi claimed diversity of Italy's power supplies is something to aim for no matter what happens with Russian gas supplies in the immediate future. "We can not be so depending on the decisions of just one country, as this jeopardises our freedom, not just our success. This is why we must first off purpose to significantly boost our manufacturing of renewable energy."

Amongst the actions the federal government is checking out to reduce Italy's reliance on Russian gas include boosting gas imports from Algeria as well as Azerbaijan and temporally increasing electricity generation utilizing coal- and oil-fired plants.

In his letter to the head of state, Rocco Viscontini also hit out at a brand-new government policy of clawing back the profits of solar plants that have taken advantage of increasing power costs.

As a result of continue to be in place till completion of the year, that step puts on PV plants with a capacity over 20kW that obtain feed-in tariffs with the Conto Energia plan and also are likewise able to sell power to the market or to Italy's power monitoring agency GSE. As long as 13GW of PV projects could be affected by the policy, according to an Italia Solare board member.

Italy's government last month unveiled steps-- including brand-new policies for solar PV in agricultural areas and also a fund to aid companies install renewables-- to speed up clean energy deployment. Although Italia Solare invited a policy to simplify the authorisation process for offshore renewables plants, the organization claimed the proposals all at once are "a waste of public money".