Clifford Chance
New M&A opportunities in the renewable energy sources
6 April 2012
Italian energy policy is changing rapidly. New laws and regulations
on renewable energy sources are evolving in quick succession and a brand new incentive mechanism will be announced soon. In this context, on 2 April 2012, a new decree on "burden sharing" was published in the Italian Official Gazzette. This may be
considered the first step of the Italian government's new approach
to renewable energy matters.
Italy implemented Directive 2009/28/EC promoting the use of energy from renewable sources through the comprehensive reform of the incentive system for renewable energy plants set forth in Legislative Decree No. 28 of 3 March 2011 (the so-called "Romani Decree"), which set the national target for 2020 for the overall share of energy from renewable sources as 17% of gross final consumption of energy. The Romani Decree expressly stated that (i) a Ministerial Decree would be issued to regulate the incentive scheme for commissioned photovoltaic plants, and further to this the Fourth Conto Energia (as defined below) was implemented, and another Conto Energia (the "Fifth Conto Energia") is currently under discussion; (ii) another Ministerial Decree would be issued to regulate the incentive scheme for any other renewable energy source/plant after 1 January 2013 and to abolish the Green Certificate mechanism, replacing it with a Feed-in Tariff mechanism (the "Feed-in Tariff Decree"). In practice these subject matters are regulated by way of Ministerial Decree, but further specifications may be needed due to their highly complex technical elements involved. The entities responsible to issue these further specifications and guidelines are, in principle, the Autorità per l'Energia Elettrica e il Gas (the Italian authority for energy and gas, the "AEEG") and GSE S.p.A. (the state-run entity in charge of the implementation of incentive systems to promote the use of renewable sources, the "GSE").
The Fifth Conto Energia and the Feed-in Tariff Decree are still under discussion; however the drafts that have been circulated allow us a first glance of the Italian legislature's current vision.
This client briefing summarises the state of the art of legislation affecting the renewable energy market in Italy in the context of the evolving legal framework, to identify and to stay ahead of potential trends.
