The Italian government has given the green light to the construction of six wind farms with a capacity of 418 megawatts, as it steps up efforts to reduce dependence on Russian gas.

 

The parks will be developed in the central and southern regions of Puglia, Basilica and Sardinia, according to a government statement.

 

The six wind farms are on top of two already cleared by the government on 18 February this year, which have a capacity of 65.5 MW.

 

On Tuesday, Italy announced its plan to end reliance on Russian gas by 2025, alongside the rest of the EU, the UK and the US.

 

The aim is to phase out the country's heavy reliance on gas imports from Russia "within 30 months", the minister for the ecological transition said.

 

 

Italy’s complex approval process has slowed down the rollout of green energy projects historically, threatening access to EU recovery funds and the achievement of climate targets. It has been called a "byzantine permitting process" which has virtually stopped development of LNG facilities beyond the three plants currently in operation.

 

Experts say Italy won't find it easy to kick Russian gas habit. Russia has been its largest supplier so far and it is now scrambling to boost flows from Algeria, Libya and Azerbaijan to meet demand and fill storage before next winter.

 

Rome, which has introduced a series of measures to spur the development of renewables, counts on gas to generate some 40 per cent of its electricity.

 

But Italy should be able to manage a Russian gas outage over the next year through energy efficiency measures, faster renewables rollout and leveraging existing gas infrastructure, according to climate change think tank ECCO.

 

Italy ranks third in Europe for both renewable power consumption and electrical and thermal power production from renewable resources. It is one of 14 EU countries that reached its 2020 target of renewables as a percentage of total energy consumption (18.2 per cent versus a 17 per cent target).

 

By the end of October 2020, Italy had almost 37,000 storage systems linked to renewable energy power plants. (Reuters)