“On one side, we must promote all revamping and repowering activities that allow us to maintain, in the best conditions, the existing photovoltaic plants. On the other side, it is necessary to set the ground for the start of a new era of investments in utility-scale plants.”
Diego Percopo, CEO of EF Solare Italia
THE CHALLENGE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
The European Council and Parliament have reached an agreement last June in regard of the governance rules of the Energy Union, which raised to 32% the quota of European energy consumption to be met from renewable sources by 2030. At national level there are new measures planned too: each Country will have to send a project of integrated planning for energy and climate by 31 December 2018 to the European Commission, then presenting the definitive planning within a year.
Italy starts from a good spot: as aGSE study found, our Country is third among Europeans for energy consumption from renewables, amounting about 11% of all the renewable energy used in Europe. We have reached the 2020 target of 17% on gross final consumption from renewables more than five years ahead.
In the electric market we have witnessed from 2005 to today a deep transformation of the renewable energy mix: the historic production from hydro and geothermal has been paired with a steadily growing one from solar and wind sources. There are the sources that will continue to grow in the next future too. The National Electric Strategy 2017 forecast a 74 TWh increase of electricity production from renewables between 2015 and 2030, which means an increase from 110 TWh to 184 TWh.
Production from PV plants is thought to more than triple, going from 23 TWg in 2015 to 72 TWh in 2030. This development of the photovoltaic will not be limited to Italy but will cover the whole European Union: according to the Global market outlook by Solar Power Europe, from today to 2022 the solar market could grow between 3.5 GW and 12.GW, with a median estimate of 7.5 GW, equal to an average yearly growth rate of 7%.
Diego Percopo, CEO of EF Solare Italia, has given the company’s view as the primary solar operator in Italy: “We believe that there are two very important main action lines that will allow us to reach national and European targets. On one side, we must promote all revamping and repowering activities that allow us to maintain, in the best conditions, the existing photovoltaic plants. On the other side, it is necessary to set the ground for the start of a new era of investments in utility-scale plants through the resolution of local issues stemming from authorization procedures, the development of market systems that ensure the stability of profits in the long term and the full opening of the service markets to renewables and storage”.