Balancing renewable energy deployment and environmental safeguards: a legal perspective from the EU and Italian contexts

This essay addresses the political and legal question of how to implement European renewable energy policies in a constitutionally oriented manner without compromising the protection of the environment, the landscape, and fundamental rights in the name of the urgency of the “energy efficiency first” principle. It argues that the transition to renewable energy, despite a clear strategic choice by the European Union’s legislative policy in this direction, still requires “responsible acceleration.” The essay: in the Introduction, defines the subject and research question; in the first two paragraphs, proposes a reconstruction of the European regulatory framework in light of the principle of environmental and climate integration and the “energy efficiency first” principle; then proposes a comparison with the US experience in terms of competition between climate objectives and procedural guarantees highlighting the profoundly different approaches taken on the two continents; the analysis of the so-called proceduralization of energy and climate law will follow with reference to the problematic issue of landscape protection through an in-depth study of Italian implementation and the case of Sardinia, as an institutional and socio-economic stress test. Based on the argumen- tative path, the conclusion offers some summary reflections on a responsible acceleration of the climate-energy transition.