Strategic Environmental Assessment of energy planning tools. A study of Italian Regions and Provinces

SEA implementation of and within energy and environmental planning instruments presents a variety of cases, because of differences in the transposition of the European Directive 2001/42/CE by member states: Italy has recently completed this legislative integration through a number of decrees approved between 2006 and 2010. Hence, SEA practice in Italy -and particularly in energy planning- is very fragmented and needs to be steered to homogeneous quality objectives. The aim of this paper is to study the quality of SEA reports in the context of energy and environmental planning tools approved by Italian regions and provinces. We take into account nine cases and adopt a methodology inspired to the SEA report quality review package introduced by Fisher (2010). In particular, we integrate the point of view of external evaluators with the opinion of a selection of insider personnel directly involved in plan making. The results obtained in this study unveil a moderate difference in the quality scores attributed by outsiders and insiders and similarities between the two groups of interviewees in the identification of strengths and weaknesses in SEA implementation.