According to the Italian photovoltaic association Italia Solare, the parliament in Rome has abolished the existing penalty tax for solar installations with an output of more than 20 kilowatts. The environmental and economic commissions of the Chamber of Deputies had approved a corresponding amendment to the legislative decree, which stipulated that operators of such systems must pay a tax of ten euros per kilowatt of installed capacity for three years.
See also: Axpo builds two solar parks south of the Alps
This money was to be used to feed an ecological and territorial equalisation fund to support the expansion of renewable energies in the various regions and provinces of Italy. However, this fund would have overlapped with existing subsidies at the municipal level.
Absurd regulation has been abolished
For the operators of photovoltaic systems and for the entire solar industry, this abolition of the penalty tax is an important result, as Paolo Rocco Viscontini, President of Italia Solare, emphasises. "The provision obviously represented a contradiction: Taxing renewable energy in order to incentivise the uptake of renewable energy in the regions is clearly a conceptual absurdity that would also have significantly impaired the development of new projects and thus jeopardised the achievement of the expansion targets of the Piano Nazionale Integrato per l'Energia e il Clima [the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan] - PNIEC," comments Paolo Rocco Viscontini.
Also interesting: MET Italia signs corporate PPA for solar park in Sicily
For this reason, Italia Solare, representing the industry, has rejected the tax from the outset and repeatedly emphasised this at meetings with various parliamentarians during the hearing on the law. The industry association has long been calling for the change, which is now finally being implemented. (su/mfo)
