Forestry England can now enable more renewable energy projects on public woodland. At last, a tree may meet a solar panel and agree that they should keep things professional.
The statutory powers came into force on 27 February 2026, allowing renewable electricity proposals on land managed by Forestry England. Power can be used on site or sold to the national grid. A woodland can now host birds, mud, one lost dog walker and an infrastructure plan explaining why none of this is quite as disruptive as it looks.
The Government says income from the projects can support tree planting, woodland management and wildlife. It is a beautiful circle. Sunlight makes electricity, electricity makes money, and money helps look after trees while people hold a meeting about whether the trees have been consulted properly. The trees will not be invited, naturally. They have a reputation for blocking access.
Forestry England manages 1,500 woods and forests covering more than 250,000 hectares. It already has more than 40 small renewable installations, mostly solar projects, including rooftop solar. The new powers could allow more. Nobody should picture the forest becoming one enormous extension lead, although someone will certainly produce a colour coded map showing where the lead would go if the forest agreed to become a diagram.
Every proposal still faces planning and development processes, environmental surveys and stakeholder consultation. Some may also need consent from the Secretary of State. So the squirrel will not be signing the paperwork with a tiny acorn stamp. The squirrel will be present at the consultation, silently judging the map, then discovering that the latest version has been uploaded under a filename called final final two.
Forestry England and Great British Energy are exploring rooftop solar across the public estate. The stated aim is more home grown clean power, stronger energy security and extra money for public forests. The trees may soon generate both oxygen and an income stream, which should make them popular at networking events, provided nobody asks what they do for work.
The announcement says there will be no net loss of woodland area, with compensatory tree planting for woodland permanently removed by renewable energy projects. This will reassure anyone worried about panels replacing trees, once they have completed the emotional journey from this tree to another tree somewhere else.
So the woodland remains calm. It has survived storms, axe men and centuries of human improvement schemes. It can probably survive a corporate away day called Powering the Canopy. The only real danger is that the trees start generating enough revenue to be asked for a quarterly performance review.
