One December morning in 2024, Bruno Carnevali received a registered letter from the representative of a Milan-based company he had never heard of. After introducing the company as “a leading operator in the renewable energy sector,” the letter stated that “through some property records research, we were able to verify that you own several plots totalling approximately 11,646 square meters listed in the land registry of the municipality of Rubiera,” in the province of Reggio Emilia. “These properties,” the text continued, “may be of interest to us, and we would therefore like the opportunity to contact you to discuss and evaluate a possible real estate transaction.” An email address and phone number were provided at the end of the letter.

Though he had no intention of selling the land on which his family had cultivated grapes for three generations, Carnevali was curious enough to call the mobile number included in the letter. An exceedingly polite representative confirmed that they were interested in buying his fields situated close to the motorway, in order to substitute the crops for solar panels. He also provided a price estimate. “We pay between 40 and 60 per cent more than the agricultural value. So we can guarantee a much higher profit than some other farmer or agricultural enterprise could offer you.” The vineyard, the representative explained, would have to be uprooted. Once permission had been obtained from the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security (MASE), the company would finalise the deed of sale, acquire the land, and install the panels.

Standing before his vines, where the first fruits are starting to appear, Carnevali is absolute. “The proposal is appealing from the economic point of view, but utterly unacceptable. You think I’d sell my land to some unknown company in Milan who would turn it into a solar farm? In my opinion, there’s a plan to convert the countryside into an expanse of panels controlled by big business. They profit from the agricultural crisis to empty the land of farmers.”

It’s difficult to say whether there’s any such plan or not. But what is certain is that there is indeed a rush to acquire or lease land for the installation of renewable energy plants. The rush is driven by the European Union’s decarbonisation goals – it requires 42.5 per cent of the bloc’s energy to be from renewable sources by 2030, and the EU to reach climate neutrality by 2050 – as well as the chance to earn generous revenues. After sweeping through southern Italy, the ground-mounted renewable energy boom is now spreading to the Po Valley, the vast, fertile plain in northern Italy where Carnevali’s vineyard is located. Various groups are on the hunt for land where they can substitute or supplement agricultural operations with energy production. 

“There are procurers working for companies that are set up overnight, who try to convince the farmers here to sell their land or grant a so-called surface right, namely using the field for the installation of panels,” says lawyer Meri Baraldi, who is handling some of these cases in the province of Modena, and working to defend farmers. “Often they sign contracts that are preliminaries of preliminaries, used only for presenting the request to the ministry. In many cases, these are intermediary companies, formed with the sole purpose of acquiring land and authorisation to then sell it to the big companies behind them.”

On the telephone with Carnevali, the company manager insisted that they “are not procurers” and that his company is the same one that will effectively construct the plant, indirectly confirming what the lawyer Baraldi had said. In response to the farmer’s question concerning the type of land they are looking for, the manager said: “Five hectares minimum. No maximum: the bigger the better.”

Energy by decree

The rush to place renewables on agricultural land began on a precise date: 8 November 2021, when the Draghi government issued the so-called energy decree, a piece of legislation designed to stimulate renewable energy production and meet the targets established by the European Commission. The decree establishes a set of subsidies for the construction of renewable energy production plants and gives the green light to a simplified authorisation procedure. It also declares that within 180 days from the decree’s approval, there would be “homogeneous principles and criteria for identifying eligible surfaces and areas for the installation of renewable energy plants.” 

The decree hit the bullseye: immediately after publication, requests to the Ministry of Environment multiplied. Energy transition had indeed been stimulated by the government. This political action caused a variety of actors to emerge, from traditional players in the energy sector to a plethora of companies created ad hoc to take advantage of the new golden goose. The result: as of today, the website of Terna (the system operator responsible for transmitting electricity across Italy) shows connection requests for new renewable energy plants totalling 355 gigawatts, more than four times the amount outlined in the Draghi decree based on European targets (which set a goal of 80 gigawatts by 2030). 

The greatest numbers are in regions like Sardinia, Sicily, and Puglia. But more recently, requests have also been growing in the Po Valley, especially in Emilia-Romagna, where planned connections stand at 10 gigawatts. In the province of Ferrara alone, there are requests for 4.55 gigawatts. And in the middle of this vast reclamation area stretching from the city to the sea, there is one municipality that appears to be the heart of this new solar boom: Argenta. 

“We have a record number of requests,” declares Andrea Panizza, president and founder of the TerrArgenta association, which was created with the intention of stimulating critical discussion around the development of land-based renewables in the municipality. “From the ministry website we can see that there are authorisation measures for 1000 hectares of land. The whole landscape is going to change.” Panizza recalls how he discovered by chance that for various plots of land, including one in front of a country house he had just purchased, there was interest in developing solar energy plants. “I found out from an article published in La Nuova Ferrara in March 2024. Immediately after reading it, I called the journalist and tried to get more information.” Together with other members of the association, Panizza created a map of plants that are authorised or in the process of being authorised, while also trying to expose the business interests behind those plants. “We are convinced that renewable energy is a major challenge for the future. But it has to be managed according to criteria that respect the environmental equilibrium, without compromising agricultural land use,” says Panizza.

The municipality of Argenta seems to have all its papers in order to become a veritable renewables hub: there is an enormous expanse of land and well-placed electrical substations, which means that plants can be developed at lower costs. It is no coincidence that there are 16 requests for as many plants spread across the municipality.

And it cannot be said that these requests won’t keep increasing. “My main worry each morning when I arrive at the town hall is whether new requests have appeared overnight,” says the mayor Andrea Baldini. Once the infrastructure for managing the energy is created, with a purpose-built electrical substation, as one of these projects envisions, it will be easier to install new plants, in a sort of cumulative process. 

Alarmed by the effects that expanses of panels could have on the landscape, Baldini joined a group of around 200 mayors who went as a delegation to Rome to request more power for local bodies to intervene. “The municipalities can share their assessments or negative opinions, but these are not binding,” he said In order to speed up procedures, the energy decree centralised the authorisation process, but also gave each region a mandate to define the so-called eligible areas. Yet the regions have not acted in a uniform manner: some have never ruled on the issue, while others have established restrictive regulations. Sardinia, for example, limited the eligible areas for wind and solar to one per cent of the regional territory. The Emilia-Romagna regional government gave its first approval of its own regulation on 13 May, providing an evaluation mechanism for the cumulative environmental impacts. The following day, however, the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio annulled the decree giving regions the power to identify eligible areas, claiming that it left them with excessive room for discretion. 

“The truth is that we as municipalities are swamped with requests and can do very little,” says Baldini. “We can ask for more compensation, but there is always a certain limit. And, even when we decide to oppose a certain plant that we judge will have an excessive impact, we do not have the financial resources to take legal action.”  

Land of conquest

But who is behind the boom? The majority of projects that are approved or under consideration in Argenta have been proposed by three large companies. A series of requests has been presented by the Enfinity group, which heads the US multinational Enfinity Global, headquartered in Miami. From its financial statements it emerges that the Italian subsidiary Enfinity Solare is wholly owned by EG Europe Holco BV, a company headquartered in the Netherlands which also appears to be linked to Enfinity Global.

Enfinity Solare has set up a series of Special Purpose Vehicles with which it has presented an array of requests for approval of renewable energy projects to MASE. That brings the total number of requests by the company in Italy to 84. In the territory of Argenta and in the neighbouring municipality of Portomaggiore it has launched seven projects, totalling 203 megawatts. Six of these have already been approved, while the authorisation of the seventh is pending with the ministry. As the company website declares, Italy is one of the key countries for Enfinity’s strategy. The company has just announced the issuance of bonds and the placement of a bond loan of up to 100 million euros through the French investment group Eiffel. These bonds follow in the wake of financing obtained in 2024 from banking institutions and other investment funds.

The second company is called Wood Italiana S.R.L. In Argenta this company has presented three projects through three Special Purpose Vehicles, for a total of 472 hectares. The headquarters of Wood Italiana are located in Corsico, in the province of Milan. It is linked to John Wood Group PLC, headquartered in Aberdeen, Scotland, and is described as a global company of engineers and consultants “on a mission to design the future of energy and materials.” The group is listed on the London Stock Exchange, where it has recently seen a considerable drop in value, falling from 200 pence to around 20. The cause appears to be an independent audit, following which the company expressed the need to make “significant changes to the balance sheets and profits of the last three financial years.” According to the company’s own announcement, negotiations are underway for its acquisition by Sidara, an engineering and project-design company headquartered in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

According to a Chamber of Commerce certificate, Wood Italiana is in fact the property of FW Investment Holding S.A.R.L., an investment fund based in Luxembourg. Wood Italiana has a variety of projects underway in Italy, whether in solar or wind power. In Argenta, it has an approved project for 168 megawatts and another for 68 megawatts pending approval with the ministry. It has also presented a third project involving a 57-megawatt plant on 116 hectares in the locality of Consandolo, just behind a residential area, through a Special Purpose Vehicle called Newagro. In September 2024, however, it sold the project to another company, Exus Italia SRL. 

Exus is the third major company active in Argenta. Besides the Consandolo plant, it has presented a 24-megawatt project, paired with a 12-megawatt battery energy storage system (BESS). The latter seems to be the primary sector of Exus in Italy: the company has concluded agreements to build 800 megawatts of BESS in Puglia. Exus Italia S.R.L. is wholly owned by a company headquartered in Spain called Exus Renewable S.R.L. This group in turn is owned by the investment fund Partners Group, headquartered in Switzerland, with a portfolio of assets under management worth 152 billion US dollars.

“We have become a land of conquest for foreign investment funds,” comments Panizza. “We are surrendering our land, without a worry for the medium-term consequences.”

But why are multinationals and foreign investment funds so keen to invest in this sector? While these investments may guarantee very high returns, they require a sizable initial capital injection and therefore cannot be made by just anyone. For every megawatt of power, 700,000 euros is required. Thus, each of these plants requires many millions of euros. It’s all worth it in the end, however: at current energy prices, the initial investment is paid back within four or five years, while the plants last for at least 20 years. If you consider that each megawatt can also guarantee profits of 150,000 euros per year, and that the average power in projects presented to MASE is several dozen megawatts, you understand why these big financial players have jumped into the gold rush.

An emptier fruit basket

Was the Draghi decree of 2021 the only viable path to stimulate the much-needed energy transition? Paolo Pileri, professor of environmental planning at Milan Polytechnic, thinks otherwise. “Instead of encouraging the use of derelict, unused and abandoned areas to produce renewable energy, it was decided to favour the financial investors and their desire to produce energy while minimising costs and maximising profits,” he says. According to the professor, this will have a lasting and detrimental consequence: it will lead to further land consumption in a country that already holds the European record. “Not to mention another far from minor aspect: we are entrusting everything to the private sector. We have abandoned the idea that energy production could be publicly owned.”

Standing amidst the evocative frescoes of the council room of the Palazzo Naselli Crispi, a stone’s throw from the Castello Estense and the headquarters of the Consorzio di Bonifica Pianura di Ferrara (Ferrara Plain Reclamation Consortium, the body that supervises the management of water for agricultural use in the province), Stefano Calderoni is of the same opinion. President of the Consortium, and an agricultural business owner himself, Calderoni is also concerned by the rapid advance of these multinational energy companies. “By delegating a matter of public interest like energy to private entities, a significant speculative spiral has been created,” he says. The consequences could irreversibly aggravate an already severe agricultural crisis. “Today, we have actors that have caused such a significant distortion in the market that land is now inaccessible to anyone wishing to farm, particularly young people.”

The rush to acquire land for developing open-field renewables is facilitated precisely by this factor: the profitability crisis in agriculture. The offer received by Carnevali over the phone is not an exception: the purchase or lease prices offered by energy companies are considerably higher than market rates. This represents a significant incentive across Italy, even in a traditionally productive area like the Po Valley.

But this is precisely the point: here the land is not as productive as it once was. In Emilia-Romagna, once the heart of European fruit production, the crisis has been hitting hard for years. Climate instability, together with the arrival of new and aggressive parasites such as the brown marmorated stink bug, have led to a collapse in production: according to data presented by CSO Italy, an association of supply-chain stakeholders, between 2013 and 2024 the hectares of cultivated pears in Emilia-Romagna were practically halved, falling from 21,300 to 11,300. In the province of Ferrara alone, in the last five years the number fell from 8000 to 4000 hectares. The numbers are equally dramatic for peaches and nectarines. The vertical drop is caused not just by a consistent decrease in production, but also by the low prices paid by organised large-scale distribution.

Massimo Fabbri knows this all too well. His orchard is one of the few that remain in Argenta. His field, which encircles the house where he lives, is at risk of becoming like Asterix’s village. If a project presented by Enfinity receives the green light, the field will be completely surrounded by panels. “They also came to me to see if I was interested in giving up my land. But I have no intention of doing so.” Fabbri has managed to secure profits by changing his business model: he sells his own fruit directly to clients, without going through cooperatives or supermarkets. But he remains the only one in the area. Around him, there are swathes of arable land that will soon host large fields of solar panels.  

It is a kind of vicious circle: with agriculture generating barely any profit, farmers are pushed to give up their land to energy companies who create a land market bubble that renders agricultural work even less profitable. “Today the price of land is kept high precisely by this energy speculation,” explains Calderoni.

Agrivoltaics: A viable solution? 

In order to remedy this problem and lessen the potential competition between food and energy, in May 2024 the Italian government intervened with a regulation that bans ground-mounted photovoltaics in agricultural areas. In the so-called Agriculture Decree, it is established that panels cannot be placed on the ground unless they are positioned at a distance of less than 500 metres from an industrial area or 300 metres from a motorway. Otherwise, they must be placed in an elevated position so that agricultural activity can continue on the ground below. All the projects presented after the approval of the Agriculture Decree must be of the “agrivoltaic” type.

The intention is to create a “positive synergy” between energy and food production, as was emphasised in a meeting held in Ferrara on 19 May 2025 by Legambiente and the Navarra Foundation. “We must produce renewable energy in a significant way to combat climate change,” declared Angelo Gentili, national agriculture manager of the environmental association. “Not to mention that agrivoltaics can provide income support to an agriculture sector on its knees.”

The observation is not far-fetched: energy production can effectively guarantee profits for agricultural business owners in difficulty. But it is only fair to ask: is this genuine synergy? 

Given that so few plants have been built so far, it is difficult to understand how much farming activity can continue below the panels, and what kind of yields that activity might have. Studies produced by the Navarra Foundation, which is at the forefront of supporting developments in this direction, claim that agrivoltaics can also provide protection against elevated summer temperatures and hailstorms. 

But not everyone agrees with this analysis. “We should be more honest and simply say: in one part of the field I produce energy and in another I produce food,” says a farmer from the province of Pavia, who has requested authorisation to install a plant on his land. “Now the new legislation forces me to make it agrivoltaic, with an increase in costs. But I don’t really care about growing underneath. In the area where I put the panels, my business is energy.” The business owner prefers not to be named because “the topic is controversial and I don’t want to provoke any unwanted attention before concluding the authorisation process.” But he too poses the key question: “When my crops no longer guarantee an adequate income, what is the harm in producing energy instead of food?”

A few hundred kilometres away, on his farm right next to the motorway, Bruno Carnevali has a different view. As he walks around his vineyard and evaluates the grapes, which “started late this year due to frost,” he continues to shake his head. “I don’t want to see the Po Valley transformed into an expanse of panels. We have a duty: produce food and be custodians of the land. If we hand over our land to produce energy, what will we eat in the end?” 

Stefano Liberti is a 2025 Bertha Challenge Fellow. This is the first article in a four-part investigation coordinated by Internazionale with the support of the Bertha Challenge fellowship. 

The Italian version of this article is published by Internazionale.

Translated by Ciarán Lawless | Voxeurop