Felled trees and intensive water consumption: Tesla’s environmental costs

Brussels – How much does a Tesla “superfactory” cost the environment? This question has been stirring the German public since the Texas-based company announced the expansion of its Berlin plant. Worrying residents (and animating activists), above all, is the abuse of natural resources, especially water that is in short supply in the area, as well as its wild logging.

Work by the US-based electric car giant owned by Elon Musk to expand a production plant in Grünheide, just outside the German capital, has led between March 2020 and May 2023 to the reclamation of some 329 hectares of forest, an area that can be translated into about 500 thousand trees. These, at least, are the figures processed from satellite images analysed by Kayrros, a company working in the field of so-called environmental intelligence, and reported by the Guardian. Antoine Halff, Kayrros’ chief analyst, estimated the atmospheric damage of the felling at about 13 thousand tons of CO2 (equal to the annual emission of about 2,800 combustion cars in the US).

In the past few months, the Grünheide site had already been the scene of many protests by environmental activists, frequently leading to clashes with law enforcement. In May, 800 of them (mainly members of the Disrupt Tesla collective) attempted to enter the factory facilities, which will be operational from March 2022, in response to the announcement of the expansion project in the neighbouring forested area. An announcement that, incidentally, the local population largely opposed: in a legally non-binding referendum last February, some 65 per cent of the inhabitants opposed the plant’s expansion.

Since then, organised protests—in which, in addition to residents, groups of environmentalist and anti-capitalist activists from the rest of the country also participate—have followed one after another without interruption, with some semi-permanent encampments erected in the surrounding forests (even with houses suspended on trees). In March, the plant had to stop the production line because of a fire set to a power unit by another activist group, which some estimates put the damage at hundreds of millions of euros.

Much to the dismay of local residents, Tesla is authorised to use 1.4 billion cubic meters of water each year in one of Germany’s driest regions. “They are stealing water from the residents” is the accusation levelled at the Texas-based automotive giant by Manu Hoyer, a 64-year-old woman who animates the protest movement, concerned—as are her fellow citizens—not only about the scarcity of water resources but also about their possible contamination due to the solvents and substances used in the plant.

Musk’s company aims to produce one million vehicles a year at the Berlin gigafactory (the only one on the Old Continent), and its plans have been approved by Brandenburg authorities in July. However, last February, the production rate was around 6,000 units per week, less than one-third of the target needed to hit the announced goal.