Following my letter of September 11, the Forest has three major resources: wind, tide and biomass. The best use of timber is not as fuel but as a carbon store in the form of buildings and wood products. Government dictates Forestry marketing policy, which unfortunately works against the development of local timber-based industry. Tidal energy in the Severn estuary is famously the second highest in the world – yet completely unused. Wind turbines tend to be anathemised as a threat to wildlife, the tourist industry and to the countryside.

End of story? Well, no. Forestry marketing policy could be localised. Timber processing, neglected during the industrial era, could be developed. Tidal lagoons, as being engineered at Swansea, could be created without harming bird life along the fast eroding coastline from Chepstow to Lydney. Natural England has purchased many acres of this land in the hope that it will form salt marshes but the local farmers know what will happen; the land will disappear altogether. The creation of long linear lagoons behind a bund following the coastline would harness the greatest energy potential available to the Forest and would also protect the railway line which otherwise will have to be re-routed when the sea level rises.

And wind turbines? The places are limited where the airflow is sufficient to make a turbine cost-effective. Turbines scaled to the requirements of communities that want them could be seen as the way Foresters do things, by interested visitors. This is not rhetoric. The footpath through Dunkiln's Farm is now more used because people want to come and see the turbine. Of the representations to the planning department only one was against the erection of Dunkiln's turbine. The tree-screened industrial estate at Lydney Docks could usefully accommodate two or three turbines which would substantially reduce costs and emissions.

Solar thermal and photovoltaic energy systems are becoming much more efficient and a Forest-based firm is gaining contracts of significant size 'outside'.

Policy makers at central and local levels are increasingly interested in funding community-led energy initiatives. It is time for our strategic planners to take note; here is an opportunity for the district to bring income and employment back home.

So let us have this debate. Let us see whether the tourist industry in the Forest can combine the image of natural beauty with the idea of natural energy.

Michael Dunwell

Dean Community Energy Group