The shift from traditional fossil fuels to renewables is implying a diffusion of “visible” PV modules in our buildings and landscapes. In contrast with traditional fossil fuels, which were hidden in the ground somewhere, far from the city life, renewable energy generation systems, and Photovoltaics (PV) in particular, are visible. This change is generally perceived as negative by the public, since the introduction of PV is evaluated as disturbing the pre-existing. Pre-existing can be understood as the landscape whose image the public is used to, at the small scale as well as at the large scale (buildings and natural or built landscapes). Research carried out in the past years has been done to solve the problem by integrating PV into buildings, that is trying to hide PV in shapes that the public already knows, without consuming additional ground surfaces. Nevertheless, the European and national policies are pushing towards an increasing use of PV, so that now its use is not limited at the building scale, but includes the landscape scale. How could landscapes look like to incorporate this energy source? How would these energy needs match the needs related to the preservation of our landscapes?
In order to understand how this problem can be approached and what are the different needs of cultural heritage conservation vs. “planet preservation”, ENEA opened a discussion with the different actors that play a role in the dialogue between PV and pre-existing. This paper will refer about the preliminary results of this discussion.