Italy

The Italian energy company has committed to paying higher returns on today’s fundraising bond if it fails to ramp up its installed renewable energy generation capacity to 55% of its overall total by the end of 2021.

The colossal solar boom Italy wants to drive in a decade could lie beyond reach if developers do not act to embrace energy storage more decisively, industry players have argued at a recent event.

Subsidies are not the answer for Italy to revive its solar industry from the deadlock brought about by the scrapping of feed-in tariffs (FiT), operators have warned at an industry event.

Danish renewables developer European Energy has broken ground on a 103MW project in Italy, bringing a utility-scale newcomer to the Southern European state.

A new report from analysts at Wood Mackenzie forecasts 6.6 GWh of residential energy storage to be installed across Europe by 2024. The economics of the technology are at a tipping point, increasingly reaching grid parity in European markets. With rising electricity demand and falling battery system costs, the trend will further spread across the continent and fuel an uptick in demand.

The costs of residential solar-plus-storage have already dropped or will only take a few years to drop to nation-wide grid averages across key European markets, according to Wood Mackenzie.

Spain has an opportunity in its upcoming reform of electricity charging to clear hurdles for self-consumption and electric vehicles (EVs), according to national PV body UNEF.