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Ministry of Environment publishes draft resolution adjusting activities that do not require the removal of Forest Reserves: key infrastructure for energy security excluded
- Guerrero Ruiz | Legal
- Jan 7
- 3 min read
The Ministry of Environment published a new draft resolution that seeks to replace Resolutions 1527 of 2012 and 1274 of 2014, which develop the provisions of paragraph 2 of article 204 of Law 1450 of 2011, which empowered that Ministry to designate the activities that cause low environmental impact and that also generate social benefit, so that they can be developed in forest reserve areas, without the need to remove them.
The regulation aims to modernize the list of activities that can be carried out within Forest Reserves without requesting prior authorization, and to a large extent it succeeds: the document is clearer, more detailed and much more in line with the social and productive realities of the territories.
Indeed, there is a clear effort to update this list for a country that has changed: communities with growing needs for public services, an ongoing energy transition, accelerated digitalization, and a more robust constitutional recognition of rural communities. The result is a broader catalog that includes community infrastructure, dispersed rural housing, basic sanitation, digital connectivity, photovoltaic solutions, and humanitarian or scientific activities that were not previously fully covered.
An important step forward, but with a worrying gap.
Among the new features, however, one gap stands out that we must highlight: the draft does not include all the necessary infrastructure for the distribution and transmission of electrical energy , limiting itself to exempting from the process of removing forest reserves, “isolated individual photovoltaic solutions, the interconnection of homes to the existing electrical distribution network, isolated hybrid systems grouped in the form of a microgrid with a maximum power limit of 5MW”
In practice, this means that works that are essential to guarantee the continuity, reliability, and safety of the electrical system, such as the following, would not be exempt from the removal process:
primary and secondary distribution networks,
regional or national transmission lines,
electrical substations,
expansions of existing networks, even when they involve very low-impact interventions,
backup infrastructure needed to prevent blackouts or service failures.
It is necessary to remember that energy is an essential public service, considered by Laws 142 and 143 of 1994 as being of public utility and social interest; therefore, guaranteeing the provision of the service allows us to provide energy security for all Colombians, not only for industrial and commercial users, but also for a rural school, a health post, and thousands of families trapped in energy poverty.
A country that wants to move forward cannot turn its back on energy security
The energy transition—which the country has embraced with ambition—requires strengthening the electrical infrastructure, not limiting it. Rural areas with historical energy deficits, many of them within forest reserves, depend heavily on these networks being able to expand with strict environmental criteria, but without regulatory obstacles.
Let us remember that in the case of the central region, the risks of shortages have been warned about due to the backlog in decisions on the removal of forest reserves, which has prevented the expansion of the distribution and transmission networks that guarantee the essential public service of energy for all the inhabitants of the Andean region, which concentrates more than 70% of the country's population, and which represents about 48.5% of the Nation's GDP (considering the Bogotá Savannah, Antioquia and the Cauca Valley).
Forest protection and energy security are not incompatible goals; in fact, they are interdependent. A country with reliable energy can adopt clean technologies, replace fossil fuels, and offer productive alternatives that reduce pressure on ecosystems.
Therefore, while this project is a step forward and deserves recognition, its final version should address this gap. Colombia needs a framework that protects forests, yes, but also one that guarantees the country has reliable and secure energy, and especially continuous and dignified access to it.
At Guerrero Ruiz | Legal, we will continue to monitor the progress of this regulatory process to support our clients in identifying the implications it will have on the development of their activities.
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