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In Italy, as many other developed countries, the main barriers to the development of climate change mitigation projects are the insufficient returns and the high up-front costs, even if in this case significant improvements have taken place in the last years (especially in the solar and photovoltaic sectors) following the issuance of incentives that facilitated the access of industrial as well as households users, de facto creating a new market which considerably reduced the technology prices.
From the governmental point of view, the main barrier is given by the strong limitation in terms of financing availability, due to the global financial crisis (which hit Italy very heavily and is still largely affecting its economy) and the committments of Italy in terms of national budget/debt, as a member of the European Union. This is causing, surprisingly, some regulatory uncertainty due to the recent strong reductions of the incentives previously allocated for projects/investments in the photovoltaic sector, with heavy effects on the PV industry which had grown considerably in the last 10 years.
One more barrier which needs to be highlighted is the bureaucracy, which has become an important limiting factor especially for the medium-large investments: as a matter of fact the long time needed to get approvals and authorizations for the construction and operation of major projects is discouraging more and more private investors to “start the adventure”. For some type of projects, like the wind turbines farms, the hardest obstacle is even given by the approval of the Environmental Impact Assessment procedure…
To boost CC projects in Italy, we should start applying more "innovative" climate schemes like:
- Combined finance through the activation of national climate funds, with the joint participation of institutional and private investors. The support from the fund’s structure/organization would also facilitate the approval/authorization procedure, which as discussed above is currently a limiting factor;
- Crowdfunding: the Italian economy is mostly based on SMEs, which do not have the financial strength to overcome the initial costs associated to climate change investments. Up to now crowdfunding is an instrument which has been applied very little in my country: I believe that it could become an important factor for the climate finance sector (funds are available with small medium investors in Italy), especially if the invested funds could be leveraged with public incentives allocated by the Government, with fiscal, administrative and financial advantages for those companies/private investors which participate to the initiative;
- Finally, in my opinion there is a big opportunity for further improving the implementation of energy efficiency/renewable energy projects at the households level (even if a lot was already done by the Italian Government in the last ten years). In particular, instruments like the PACE - Property Assessed Clean Energy (www.pacenow.org/about-pace/) and the PAYS - Pay-As-You-Save (www.smallestnpp.eu/documents/4_PAYS.ppt) financing schemes would be extremely effective in Italy, considering that (especially in the city centers) most of the households still have outdated electrical/thermal systems and the main obstacles to replace them or improve their efficiency is given by the initial investment.
From the governmental point of view, the main barrier is given by the strong limitation in terms of financing availability, due to the global financial crisis (which hit Italy very heavily and is still largely affecting its economy) and the committments of Italy in terms of national budget/debt, as a member of the European Union. This is causing, surprisingly, some regulatory uncertainty due to the recent strong reductions of the incentives previously allocated for projects/investments in the photovoltaic sector, with heavy effects on the PV industry which had grown considerably in the last 10 years.
One more barrier which needs to be highlighted is the bureaucracy, which has become an important limiting factor especially for the medium-large investments: as a matter of fact the long time needed to get approvals and authorizations for the construction and operation of major projects is discouraging more and more private investors to “start the adventure”. For some type of projects, like the wind turbines farms, the hardest obstacle is even given by the approval of the Environmental Impact Assessment procedure…
To boost CC projects in Italy, we should start applying more "innovative" climate schemes like:
- Combined finance through the activation of national climate funds, with the joint participation of institutional and private investors. The support from the fund’s structure/organization would also facilitate the approval/authorization procedure, which as discussed above is currently a limiting factor;
- Crowdfunding: the Italian economy is mostly based on SMEs, which do not have the financial strength to overcome the initial costs associated to climate change investments. Up to now crowdfunding is an instrument which has been applied very little in my country: I believe that it could become an important factor for the climate finance sector (funds are available with small medium investors in Italy), especially if the invested funds could be leveraged with public incentives allocated by the Government, with fiscal, administrative and financial advantages for those companies/private investors which participate to the initiative;
- Finally, in my opinion there is a big opportunity for further improving the implementation of energy efficiency/renewable energy projects at the households level (even if a lot was already done by the Italian Government in the last ten years). In particular, instruments like the PACE - Property Assessed Clean Energy (www.pacenow.org/about-pace/) and the PAYS - Pay-As-You-Save (www.smallestnpp.eu/documents/4_PAYS.ppt) financing schemes would be extremely effective in Italy, considering that (especially in the city centers) most of the households still have outdated electrical/thermal systems and the main obstacles to replace them or improve their efficiency is given by the initial investment.