The Constitutional Court has struck down Sardinia's law on suitable areas. There are two reasons for this: after striking down the moratorium that intended to block all renewable energy production facilities, the Constitutional Court also struck down the text approved by the Regional Council in December 2024 (Law 20), with which the Region had attempted to manage the invasion of wind and photovoltaic power on the island.
In summary, with ruling number 184, filed today based on the Government's appeal, the Court "reaffirmed that the classification of an area as unsuitable cannot result in an a priori ban on the installation of systems, which would result in the inability to access the simplified authorization procedures established by state law to accelerate the spread of renewable energy sources in suitable areas."
The decision also "stated that the regional law cannot override, with the sole limitation of irreversible changes to the state of the premises, all previously issued authorizations for which operators in the sector have already taken action, unless such override is motivated by technical or scientific reasons." This would result in "an unreasonable restriction on legitimate expectations that undermines the principle of legal certainty."
Furthermore, when a project falls partly within suitable areas and partly within unsuitable areas, "the unsuitability cannot automatically prevail, as established by Sardinian law."
The final decision regarding the construction of the plants "in this case, must be made following the individual authorization process for the specific plant project, which must take into due consideration the maximum protection of the landscape and protected natural areas that justify the non-simplified authorization process," balancing the protection of nature and the environment by reducing polluting energy sources, also in the interest of future generations.
According to the constitutional judges, in the event of requests from municipalities to expedite the process for installations in areas deemed unsuitable, through a sort of institutional agreement, "the Region cannot establish a landscape authorization procedure different from that dictated by state legislation, because regions are not permitted to introduce exemptions from state environmental protection institutions that dictate uniform regulations throughout the country, which include the landscape authorization referred to in Article 146 of the Cultural Heritage and Landscape Code, a provision of major economic and social reform that the Region must also comply with."
The Sardinian law on suitable areas, however, has been poorly implemented: frozen by the Council of State—which rejected the decree on which it was based— it was not taken into consideration during the evaluation procedures for requests to install systems, which were either authorized or rejected without taking into account the perimeter desired by the Todde administration.
