Environmental activists halt construction of Tesla’s Berlin Gigafactory
On Sunday, a German court ordered Tesla to stop halt its process of clearing 92 hectares of forest near its capital Berlin where CEO Elon Musk planned to build his first European Gigafactory. The decisions comes as a small victory for Gruene Liga Brandenburg (Green League of Brandenburg), a group of local environmental activists, who claim the construction would have a significant detrimental effect on local wildlife and water quality.
While the German environmental ministry gave Tesla permission to start clearing the land in preparation for construction, Tesla had not yet been given approval to actually build the factory, meaning Musk was beginning the process at his own risk. The court order to stop cutting down trees is mostly because clearing the forest would only take three days to finish, rendering the hearing, which would take longer, completely useless.
Now, it seems there will be hefty delays to his project as the court even implies that the Green League may have a substantial complaint. “It should not be assumed that the motion seeking legal protection brought by the Green League lacks any chance of succeeding,” the court said in a statement justifying the stoppage, according to Reuters.
Musk has defended the Berlin Gigafactory, claiming the factory’s water usage and impact on the environment are greatly exaggerated. Firstly, the deforestation is occurring on what used to be a cardboard farm, so therefore the trees were planted with the intention for harvesting. To compensate for the trees cut down, Tesla has also promised to plant three times the number of trees they cut down, according to Electrek. This environmental consciousness isn’t out of the ordinary either—Elon Musk donated $1 million late last year to #TeamTrees to plant 1 million trees. In that same twitter thread, he replied, “Giga Berlin will build sustainable energy vehicles using sustainable energy, so net environmental impact will be extremely positive!”
The U.S. electric car company had announced plans to build this factory last November and had projected the factory would produce as many as 5,000 cars annually and employ 12,000 people. According to Reuters, two pro-business political groups, the Christian Democrat and Free Democrat parties, have concerns that this legal battle will place Germany in a negative light, deterring future international ventures from considering Germany for construction projects.
Interestingly, in the early 2000s, BMW had intended to build a car factory on the same plot of land but eventually decided to move the factory construction to Leipzig after environmental pushback. There’s the conundrum that, unlike BMW, Tesla intends to produce EV vehicles, which are much more environmentally sustainable, yet it is still forced to defend the polluting construction and operational process.
