The Amendment to the Renewable Energy Law: outlook, contradictions and future scenarios

One year after the approval by the Council of Ministers of Legislative Decree No. 190 of 25 November 2024 (also known as “TU FER”), the Government has made significant changes to the regulatory framework for the sector with Legislative Decree No. 178 of 26 November 2025 (known as the “Amendment”).

The Amendment, published just six days after the recent measures on suitable areas (for further details, please refer to our previous article Suitable areas: significant regulatory changes are underway. News and impacts on future investment strategies) and which will come into force on 11 December 2025, further amends the TU FER with potential significant implications that are far from marginal on current market practices. 

Below is a summary of the main regulatory changes, together with some preliminary considerations on their potential practical implications.

1. Storage systems

At the express request of industry associations, the Amendment modifies Article 1, paragraph 1 of the TU FER by introducing an explicit reference to storage systems.

This definitively clarifies that the administrative regimes provided for in the TU FER also apply to this type of asset, which, moreover, by virtue of the reference in Article 2, paragraph 2, must be considered to be of public utility, urgent and cannot be postponed.

As is well known, the annexes to the TU FER already covered interventions on electrochemical storage systems, but there was no provision that unequivocally confirmed the extension of the administrative regimes to them.

2. Titles suitable for the availability of the area

The amendments introduced to Articles 8 and 9 of the TU FER (relating to PAS and AU procedures) definitively clarify that preliminary contracts are suitable titles to demonstrate the legitimate availability of the area.

This is, of course, the concrete transposition into law of recent court rulings on the subject.

Finally, the Regional Administrative Court of Palermo, in its rulings nos. 2131 and 2133 of 30 September 2025, confirmed that preliminary contracts duly registered and transcribed in accordance with Article 2645-bis of the Italian Civil Code may also be considered suitable, since “with regard to the principle of proportionality, requiring the conclusion and production of final contracts even before the authorisation is issued would place an unjustified burden on the operator, forcing it to incur costs and financial constraints without any certainty of a favourable outcome to the proceedings, with an excessive sacrifice in relation to the protection sought by the legislator. In this sense, [...], the filing of final contracts may be postponed until after the authorisation has been issued”.

These principles have also already been implemented at regional level, by Circular No. 39593 of 14 November 2025, in which the Sicilian Region ordered the adaptation of the checklist of documentation required for authorisation procedures to the aforementioned rulings.

3. Environmental compensation

Article 7 of the Amendment introduces changes to letter m) of paragraph 4 of Article 8 of the TU FER, providing for new methods for determining the amounts to be allocated to finance the territorial compensation programme to the municipality in whose territory the plant will be installed.

As is well known, the previous regulatory framework (represented by the Ministerial Decree of 10 September 2010 and the TU FER) generically provided that this percentage should be calculated on the basis of “revenues including current incentives, deriving from the valorisation of the electricity produced annually by the plant” without, however, clarifying the scope of this term (e.g., whether it referred to annual revenues, revenues from energy production or company profits).

As a result of the changes introduced by the Amendment, in the case of projects subject to the PAS regime, the previous "territorial compensation programme for the municipality concerned of not less than 2 per cent and not more than 3 per cent of the income" is replaced by the new thresholds, not less than 1 per cent and not more than 3 per cent, taking as a benchmark the "value of expected production during the useful life of the plant, net of the value of any energy consumed by the plant itself".

The same applies to projects subject to the Single Authorisation regime, with the difference that the maximum percentage threshold has been raised to 4% (see Article 9, paragraph 10, letter d, TU FER).

The amendments will enter into force on 11 December 2025 and further criteria regarding the application of compensation measures will be specified when the 2010 Guidelines will be updated pursuant to Article 14, paragraph 5, of the TU FER. 

4. Alternative Dispute Resolution 

With the inclusion of Article 12-ter in the TU FER, the Amendment introduces a significant innovation to reduce litigations.

A new dispute resolution mechanism has been introduced, which will be managed by the Single Buyer and defined by ARERA with other measures.

This mechanism should be applied with reference to the administrative regimes connected with interventions on renewable energy plants, settling disputes relating, for example, to the assessment of the existence of territorial constraints, the verification of the completeness of the documentation accompanying the PAS or the AU application, and the application of the simplified rules for interventions in suitable areas.

5. Application of the abbreviated procedure pursuant to Article 119 of the Administrative Procedure Code

In order to ensure the fastest possible resolution of disputes relating to procedures and measures adopted by the public administration in relation to RES plants, the Amendment introduces Article 10-bis into the Consolidated RES Act. 

This article establishes that the provisions of Article 119 of the Administrative Procedure Code (relating to the summary procedure for administrative proceedings) apply to the aforementioned disputes.

As a result of this provision, all ordinary procedural deadlines are halved, except, in first instance judgment, those for the notification of the appeal, the incidental appeal and the additional grounds, as well as those for the filing of a precautionary appeal.

6. Further changes

Other new changes worth mentioning include:

• the increase from 10 to 12 MW of the threshold for the application of the PAS regime with regard to photovoltaic solar plants located in areas suitable pursuant to Article 11-bis of the TU FER, to be submitted to PAS (Annex B, Section I of the TU FER) in order to bring the text into line with the provisions of Article 13 on the exemption of such projects from environmental procedures;

• the introduction of the definition of “connected works” to be understood as 'the works connecting the plant to the electricity distribution network or to the national transmission network necessary for the injection of the energy produced or stored into the aforementioned networks, as well as the works connecting to the natural gas or hydrogen distribution network for biomethane or hydrogen production plants, with the exception of building works';

• The clarification that the assessment of EIA applicability, where necessary, must precede the beginning of the AU proceding and must last no longer than 90 days from the verification of document completeness referred to in Article 19, paragraph 2 of the Environmental Code.

Conclusions

The innovations introduced by the Amendment – although not equal with those recently discussed in relation to suitable areas – would appear to have a significant impact on the regulatory framework for the sector and, consequently, on future investments in the renewable energy sector.

Certainly, the provisions aimed to clarify (once and for all) that preliminary contracts can be used to demonstrate the availability of the area could be seen positively.

Another positive change could be the raising of the threshold for interventions subject to PAS and the definition of related works.

On the other hand, the following provisions are questionable:

• the negative changes made, compared to the latest version of the Amendment circulated in recent weeks, with regard to environmental compensation measures. In fact, compared to the previous text, at the instigation of ANCI:

  • the minimum threshold applicable to projects authorised in PAS has been raised from 0.5% to 1% and the maximum threshold for projects in AU from 3% to 4%. In this regard, in the absence of clear transitional provisions, it will be necessary to understand, at the time of application, whether the new 4% threshold for AU will be taken as a reference by municipal administrations only with regard to future authorisation procedures or, conversely, also with reference to procedures already in progress and to procedures for the revision/renegotiation of agreements concerning exclusively financial measures in violation of Law No. 145/2018 (later deemed legitimate by the Constitutional Court in its ruling No. 46 of 23 March 2021).

  • the reference parameter has returned to being 'the value of expected production during the useful life of the plant' instead of the previous 'value of expected production for the first five years of operation of the plant';

• the changes introduced on the judicial and extrajudicial fronts. On the one hand, there are the provisions that recognize the application of a summary procedure (without prejudice to the 60-day deadline for notification of the appeal) and even an alternative dispute resolution mechanism; on the other hand, it has once again confirmed the possibility of challenging both administrative measures and those issued by the Single Buyer through the extraordinary appeal to the President of the Republic (which must be filed within 120 days from the date of full knowledge of the act presumed to be harmful), with a considerable expenditure in terms of time and costs for operators in the sector;

• the introduction of storage systems among those to which the TU FER expressly applies, without however specifying which areas are suitable for this type of asset, with considerable uncertainty regarding the application of the law in the context of scouting for land to be dedicated to such initiatives.

Without wishing to overlook the legislator's commendable ambitions for regulatory reform and the aforementioned potential clarifying effects that could result from the Amendment, for now, it seems that has been done 'too little, too late'.

In fact, in view of the ambitious targets set for 2030, the regulatory framework for the sector still appears to be marked by numerous inconsistencies and grey areas that are likely to continue to have a negative impact on the investment strategies of market operators. 

In any case, in order to have a clear, complete and comprehensive picture of the future new regulations (and the resulting reactions of market players), it will still be necessary to wait and see if and how local administrations will implement these regulatory changes and, as regards the new form of ADR, the subsequent implementing measures of ARERA.

Written by Giovanni Battista De Luca, Lorenzo Piscitelli and Ludovica Petrucci.