Among the most difficult aspects for operators in the renewables sector is that of the limits to the possibility of setting up photovoltaic systems with ground-mounted modules on agricultural areas. Both national and regional regulations, in fact, present increasingly equivocal and contradictory features.

With the latest state regulations that seemed to increase the possibilities of installing photovoltaic systems on agricultural areas, at the regional level, on the other hand, legal or regulatory provisions have come into force that significantly diminish them. It is also only right and necessary to premise that at the national level it seems that we are moving toward a sharp reversal with the entry into force of the new “Agriculture” decree-law, which is expected to declare agricultural areas unsuitable for the installation of photovoltaic systems with ground-mounted modules.

We briefly report some of the most relevant regional decisions on the issue, with which the sector’s operators are confronted. In Lombardy, the Regional Council approved the Regional Environment and Climate Plan, introducing new and numerous criteria for evaluating applications to install PV systems on agricultural land. In Veneto, on the other hand, they require producers to enslave additional hectares of land, which they have in various capacities, to agricultural use, so as to ensure that agricultural production can be maintained or started on that land, effectively discouraging the implementation of PV projects. Emilia Romagna has updated its localization criteria, adding a long series of equally restrictive and limiting rules and procedures.