Picture a forested hillside stripped bare, replaced by row after row of black solar panels. That’s the tradeoff many communities face: renewable power at the cost of ecosystems. But a growing body of research suggests it doesn’t have to be that way. The solution may look less like an industrial solar farm and more like a forest — solar trees.
Researcher Dan-Bi Um at the Korea Maritime Institute compared conventional flat-panel arrays with solar trees — structures designed to mimic real trees, with panels branching upward like leaves. Their results were startling. “Linear arrangements of these structures achieve superior power capacity compared to conventional fixed panels while preserving existing forest cover,” the team reports.
Why Trees Make Better Solar Farms
Unlike ground-mounted panels that demand clearcuts, solar trees are built and installed vertically into the canopy. This design allows light to filter down to understory plants while still capturing energy above. In simulations using Google Earth satellite imagery, Dan-Bi Um found that solar trees preserved 99% of the forest, compared to just 2% left standing when flat-panel plants were installed. All without sacrificing power output.
Conventional solar farms need a lot of land. In South Korea, that’s meant cutting forests to install large arrays of flat-panel plants, a process that “completely destroy[s] the biodiversity of the forest ecosystem,” Um warns. Between 2016 and 2018, deforestation tied to solar farms in the country more than quadrupled.
Solar trees sidestep deforestation. By placing them along hiking trails or forest boundaries at 20-meter intervals, the researchers showed that 63 trees outfitted with high-efficiency panels could match the one-megawatt capacity of a conventional plant — all while leaving the forest intact.
The advantages, of course, go beyond forests. In cities, solar trees provide shade for pedestrians and cars while generating clean electricity. Some models include charging ports for electric vehicles or benches equipped with wireless charging . Researchers also note their cooling effect in urban “heat island” zones, where rising summer temperatures threaten public health.
The Bigger Picture
This research arrives at a critical moment. Nations have pledged at recent climate summits to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 while halting deforestation. The problem is that those goals often collide. In South Korea, deforestation tied to solar projects surged from 529 hectares in 2016 to 2,443 hectares in 2018. Similar conflicts play out worldwide, from the Amazon to Appalachia.
The solution may lie in designs that treat forests as allies, not obstacles. Solar trees already exist as prototypes — from a 2017 installation outside South Korea’s National Assembly to what India’s CSIR-CMERI calls the “world’s largest solar tree,” capable of producing 11,500 kilowatt-hours annually. Yet until now, most studies looked only at the performance of individual units, not how entire groves of them compare to sprawling panel fields. This study is the first to run that head-to-head test in coastal forests.
The economic case is growing too. South Korea has some of the world’s highest land prices. Because solar trees require far less ground, they could prove cheaper than panel farms in countries where land is at a premium. And as solar panel efficiency continues to climb, tree-based installations will only get more competitive.
Challenges and Advantages
Still, challenges remain. Few major manufacturers produce panels specifically designed for solar trees, and installation costs remain higher than for flat arrays. Efficiency is limited by shading between branches, though newer designs — like helicoidal or sunflower-tracking trees — address this issue. The researchers argue that international bodies like the Green Climate Fund or national governments may need to subsidize early adoption. Without that support, companies are unlikely to take the risk of scaling up.
Plus, solar trees have some added benefits. They promise landscapes where people can hike, watch birds, or simply rest under shade — all while the forest keeps pulling carbon from the air.
“Solar trees are a promising dual-solution to align energy and environmental priorities,” the authors conclude.
The findings were reported in the journal Scientific Reports.
