Summer after summer, both in the Po plain, which waters the agricultural and industrial north of the country, and in more southern regions, drought imposes itself in Italy as a structural fact, a reality with which the country must henceforth live. and compose. In 2022, Italy thus recorded a cumulative rainfall deficit of 30%, while the year 2023 is also set to be critical with the first months particularly hot and not very rainy combined with light snowfall at altitude.
In this context and in the absence of a short-term solution, the public authorities are beginning to pave the way for players in the desalination sector, now on the offensive to present the technologies and infrastructures allowing the production of fresh water from water or brackish water as one of the solutions to the now irreversible water crisis that the country is experiencing.
A “drought” decree, adopted in March by the Italian government, thus provides for the relaxation of regulations surrounding the construction of watermakers. Below a production of 200 liters per second, these facilities will no longer be subject to an assessment of their environmental impact. Only the criterion of proven water deficiency in the area they must serve is maintained while the need to optimize the distribution networks disappears.
Italy’s current approach therefore revises the more restrictive regulatory framework imposed in June 2022 by the so-called “Salva mare” law, that the construction of desalination infrastructure should only be considered as a last resort. Adopted with the objective of protecting marine environments, it took into account the negative externalities of desalination activities: the discharge of 1.5 liters of brackish water into the source environment for 1 liter of fresh water produced.
Historically limited in Italy where they produce only 0.1% of the fresh water consumed in the country, desalination activities are mainly installed on smaller islands. The obstacles that have limited their development until now having been overcome, the companies owning desalination technologies as well as construction players specializing in infrastructure, such as the Italian giant Webuild, hope to see a new market open up. Pietro Salini, the CEO of this group, involved in the field of water treatment with its subsidiary Fisia Italimpianti, had already called, during an interview given to RAI in July 2022to massive investments in desalination facilities presented as “the best and fastest solution to solve the dramatic problem of drought affecting Italy”.
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