This study analyses the effectiveness of policies that foster investment in renewable energy sources by reducing the length, costs and uncertainty of the authorization procedure necessary to build renewable energy plants. It estimates the impact of several reforms to simplify the authorization procedure for the installation of medium-sized photovoltaic plants, enacted by a subset of Italian regions between 2009 and 2013.
The results show that the reforms led to a 29 per cent increase in newly installed capacity in medium-sized plants at the quarterly frequency, equating to 12 MW of additional investment. Furthermore, the evidence shows that local administrative efficiency, a factor contributing to the length of authorization procedures, did not influence the effectiveness of the policy.
