Suitable areas: The Constitutional Court rejects the appeal against the law. It warns: "The landscape must be protected."
Many of the provisions challenged by Iberdrola Renovables had already been declared unconstitutional. The Court upholds the limits on installations on agricultural land: "A balance is needed."
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The Constitutional Court has rejected the legitimacy issues raised by the Lazio Regional Administrative Court in the proceedings brought by Iberdrola Renovables Italia spa regarding the regulation of areas suitable for renewable energy plants in Sardinia and the national ban on installing ground-mounted photovoltaic systems in agricultural areas.
The decision is contained in judgment 156 of 2026, filed today.
The ruling stems from proceedings brought by Iberdrola Renovables Italia before the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR), which was also joined by Elettricità Futura. The ruling concerns some of the main state and regional regulations governing the siting of renewable energy plants, which, according to the plaintiffs, undermined several projects on the island, including Benetutti Mercuria, Carbonia-Iglesias, and Prangili.
According to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, applying the Sardinian law could have resulted in a ban on the construction of the plants and the loss of validity of the permits. However, the Court first noted that most of the contested provisions had already been declared unconstitutional by its previous ruling 184 of 2025, and therefore declared the related issues manifestly inadmissible. Also inadmissible were the objections to the law's annexes identifying areas unsuitable for wind, photovoltaic, agrivoltaic, biomass, and geothermal energy: the annexes had been challenged in their entirety without identifying which specific provisions were inconsistent with the Constitution.
Beyond procedural issues, the Court addressed the merits of the case, rejecting the challenges to Article 1, paragraph 7, of the regional law, namely the section that establishes the prevalence of the classification as unsuitable when a project only partially falls within areas deemed suitable. According to the constitutional judges, this provision does not introduce an absolute prohibition , but merely requires the use of a standard authorization procedure, in which the balance between energy production and land protection must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. The objective of energy transition—the Court emphatically recalls—does not automatically prevail over all other constitutional interests, and the agricultural landscape is also among the assets protected by Article 9 of the Constitution.
"The interest in building renewable energy plants," it states, "cannot, therefore, always automatically take precedence over the interest in protecting the landscape. "Landscape" typically also includes agricultural landscapes." For this reason, legislators can impose limits on the installation of ground-mounted photovoltaic systems in agricultural areas, provided that the balance between environmental protection, agricultural activity, and energy production is reasonable and proportionate.
(Unioneonline)
