Oil group Eni and Italian state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) have created a joint venture (JV) that will invest more than €800 million (US$953 million) in Italy’s renewables sector by 2025.
GreenIT, which is 51% owned by Eni and 49% by CDP Equity, will produce energy mainly from PV and wind plants, with an aim of reaching 1GW of installed capacity in Italy in the next five years.
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The JV will develop, construct and manage renewable energy projects at property assets owned by CDP, power plant sites that have reached the end of their useful life as well as greenfield locations.
Eni and CDP said the partnership is in line with the objectives set by Italy’s 2030 integrated national energy and climate plan (PNIEC), which calls for renewables to cover 55% of electricity consumption by the end of the decade. By then, it is expected solar PV will become the country’s main source of clean energy generation, with 52GW of installed capacity, followed by wind at 20.2GW and hydropower at 19.2GW.
Giuseppe Ricci, general manager of Eni’s Energy Evolution business, said the JV contributes to the oil major’s “transformation” towards renewable energy. “Thanks to the partnership with Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, our commitment to decarbonisation becomes increasingly concrete: to achieve the objectives of the United Nations 2030 agenda, it is essential to create a system at country level and to pool together investment and know-how opportunities.”
Eni last year announced plans to deploy 55GW of renewables by 2050, with an interim target of 5GW by 2025. According to the company’s website, it had just 200MW of installed clean energy capacity in 2019.
Efforts to scale up its solar presence have seen the firm create a US-focused joint venture with Falck Renewables, which last year acquired project developer Building Energy US. The company last month made its initial clean energy investment in Spain, purchasing three PV projects from local developer X-Elio.
A recent report from SolarPower Europe revealed that Italy is the EU market with the second highest amount of PV capacity, with 21.3GW installed at the end of 2020. However, the country added just 800MW of additional solar last year.