The development of a Tesla gigafactory near Berlin has resulted in about 500,000 trees being felled, according to satellite analysis.
The building of the German factory has been highly controversial and attracted significant protests, as well as prompting a debate about the trade-offs involved in developing a green economy.
Elon Musk, Tesla’s owner, has criticised local police for letting off “leftwing protesters”.
Satellite images show 329 hectares (813 acres) of forest were cut down at the site between March 2020 and May 2023, according to the environmental intelligence company Kayrros. That is equivalent to approximately 500,000 trees.
Since May, climate activists have protested against the planned expansion of the gigafactory, occupying tree houses in a nearby camp and attempting to storm the site. One group set fire to an electricity pylon and stopped the factory’s production for a few days in March.
Karolina Drzewo, from the campaign alliance Turn Off Tesla’s Tap, said the analysis showed the company’s production of electric vehicles had caused local destruction of nature as well as global damage through mining for metals. “In one of the driest regions in Germany, too much of the environment has already been destroyed,” she said. “An expansion and thus even more destruction of forests and endangerment of the protected drinking water area must be prevented.”
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Antoine Halff, the chief analyst at Kayrros, said: “The Tesla factory in Germany has led to quite a bit of cutting down of trees. Of course, it has to be put in perspective, against the benefit of replacing internal combustion engine cars with electric vehicles.”
Halff said the lost trees were equivalent to about 13,000 tonnes of CO2, the annual amount emitted by 2,800 average internal combustion engine cars in the US. “So that’s a fraction of the number of the electric cars that Tesla produces and sells every quarter,” he said. “You always have trade-offs, so you need to be aware of what the terms of the trade-off are.”
In July, a plan to expand the Tesla plant to double production to 1m cars a year was approved by Brandenburg state’s environment ministry.
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Dozens of environmental incidents have been reported at the site – where millions of battery cells are also produced – including leaks or spills of diesel fuel, paint and aluminium.
Tesla did not respond at the time but later said there had been several incidents on the factory site during construction and since the start of the operations. It said none caused environmental damage and that if necessary, corrective measures were implemented.
Kayrros measures deforestation using optical images from the satellite Sentinel-2, which have a resolution of 10 metres and are publicly available. This data is automatically processed but checked for quality by remote-sensing experts.
Kayrros said its deforestation detection tool was being developed to help companies comply with EU deforestation regulations, which from the start of 2025 will ban the import of goods linked to forest destruction. The tool could also be used to independently monitor forests being used as carbon offsets in the voluntary carbon market, the company said.
