The Italian government has put the kibosh on a plan to build ground-mounted photovoltaic systems on agricultural land, Bloomberg reports.
According to a draft of a new agriculture law, "the areas classified as agricultural by the current urban planning plans are areas not suitable for the installation of photovoltaic systems with modules placed on the ground."
The lawwhich was included in the draft of a new agriculture lawseems to be an attempt to "overcome all the discussions that have been ongoing for months between ministries and regions to establish that agricultural land is to be considered unsuitable areas," writes Stefano Piraino at Born2Invest, a website dedicated to Italian renewable energy.
But it's not just agricultural land that may be off-limits to photovoltaic plants.
The law also calls for a two-year moratorium on approving new photovoltaic plants in areas that have already been approved.
Piraino points out that the law seems to be based on a 2011 legislative decree that didn't set out criteria for areas to be approved.
It's also unclear whether the plants in question have already been built, since the 2011 law calls for plants that have already been approved to be put in place for two years.
The proposed law is expected to be voted on by the country's
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