Renewables, Nadara: six years to get the OK for an agri-voltaic plant
Nodo autorizzazioni: the bureaucratic process of a project between the Province of Foggia, the Ministry and Palazzo Chigi
by Domenico Palmiotti
T he request for authorisation for an investment in agri-voltaics in the Foggia area was submitted in September 2019 to the Province of Foggia and the Apulia Region, but the go-ahead only arrived in August 2025 from the Prime Minister's Office. This is the story of two Nadara projects in the agri-voltaic sector, a 75-million operation involving the Cerro park in San Paolo di Civitate (42 MW of installed power, 75 thousand MWh of annual production of renewable energy to cover the needs of 28 thousand families) and the Mezzanelle park between Apricena and San Paolo di Civitate (47 MW of installed power, 80 thousand MWh of annual production to cover the needs of 30 thousand families).
The authorisation process
"Until 2022, we were not able to conclude the procedure with the Province of Foggia, delegated for the environmental part by the Apulia Region, and so,' explains Gianluca Cipolletta, Nadara's Head of Development Italia, 'we decided to take advantage of the new legislation that had been approved in the meantime, which also allowed photovoltaic plants to go to the Ministry of the Environment to get the OK for construction. At the end of 2022, we thus 'moved' the project from the Province of Foggia to Mase.
The latter took just over a year to conclude the environmental authorisation procedure, but when the process was closed in 2023, the Ministry of Culture gave a negative opinion. As there was one ministry in favour and one against, it then went to the Council Presidency to resolve the issue, which took about nine months. Quite quickly compared to other procedures'.
'With the Province of Foggia we also held service conferences, but given the alignment of the timeframe, we went to Mase,' Cipolletta continues. 'For its part, the local authority, like many other public administrations in Italia, complained about a high number of projects to work on and the lack of internal resources.
Comparison with Friuli
"The peculiar thing is that for a similar project in Friuli, which is already in operation, a 33 MW plant, everything was done at regional level and concluded in one year: from June 2022 to June 2023.
