Environmental and Landscape Protection in the Energy Transition

Abstract

The article examines the conflict between landscape protection and the expansion of renewable energy sources (RES) in the national context, highlighting how the European RED directives have driven the adoption of simplified regulations for authorization procedures, with negative consequences for the protection of landscape and cultural assets. Administrative case law reaffirms the importance of providing adequate reasoning in decisions, yet tends to prioritize energy interests by promoting the widest possible diffusion of RES and framing them as a prevailing public interest. The article emphasizes the need for a notion of «sustainable landscape» as a tool to balance environmental protection (in its industrial dimension) with landscape and cultural preservation, thereby preventing the energy transition from becoming a pretext for reproducing manufacture logics.