The Italian Network for Sustainable Agrivoltaics

Abstract

In Italy, agrivoltaic systems (APVs) are seen as a driver for getting the national targets for photovoltaics (PV) and decarbonization, to enhance innovation in the agricultural sector, and reducing the energy costs on farms, overcoming land and landscape preservation issues, which cause bottlenecks in the permitting process of PV in agricultural areas. On April 2021, ENEA, in collaboration with ETA Florence Renewable Energies, launched the first Italian Network for Sustainable Agrivoltaics, with the objective of building knowledge and good practices around APV, enabling to support the implementation of sustainable agrivoltaic solutions and to build up a shared vision of Sustainable Agrivoltaics including three dimensions: Energy, Agriculture and Landscape. In the framework of the activities of the Italian Network for Sustainable Agrivoltaics, ENEA elaborated a communication strategy in cooperation with ETA Florence Renewable Energies, tailored to the identified major target groups (scientific community, broad public, specific stakeholder/user groups, farmer associations, media) and appropriate communication channels and conceived key communication elements. With the publication of the Guidelines for The Design, Construction and Operation of Agrivoltaic Plants on 27 June [1], new topics open up for the future which mainly concern the design and quality assessment around APVs in which the Network can be involved, thus maintaining a role of promoting knowledge advancement in this sector.