The Tesla Gigafactory located in Grünheide near Berlin still has not received final approval. According to Axel Vogel, Minister for the Environment of the State of Brandenburg, towards RBB He said at least one report that authorities requested from the company is missing from Saturday – not all of them of sufficient quality to get legally safe approval. The Minister did not want to give a timeline for further progress, but with the approach of the Christmas season, approval and thus the start of production this year should not come to fruition. At the same time, an important compensating measure is underway: service providers have begun planting the last 100 hectares of Tesla’s total of 294 hectares of new forest.
Urgent Reforestation for Tesla
Currently, 36,000 tree seedlings are planted per day at the site east of the Tesla plant, the Natural Space for Generations (NfG) Project, operated by the area’s Landowners Association, announced last week. A total of 150 hectares of new mixed forest will be planted at this high speed by the end of January. 100 hectares of this is to make up for the clearance that allowed Tesla into the German Gigafactory site from last February.
In total, artificial pines have been removed from about 156 hectares of the Tesla plant so far. The company had previously promised to reforest three times from the area, but was only obligated to provide 294 hectares of new forest. On request, Martin Zaramowicz of the state land agency teslamag.de explained that the first part of it, about 144 hectares distributed throughout Brandenburg, was implemented last spring. Also in 2020, NfG processed another 50 hectares of land for its members on behalf of the agency. And in the second week of December, the last part is now starting with about 600,000 new trees on 100 hectares for Tesla.
And so it’s almost as urgent as the Gigafactory itself. All seedlings should be in the ground before the end of January so that they can grow well in the spring, he explained according to the message Managing Director NfG. In the dry region one “depends on the water from the winter months”. Plus, the last round of afforestation started three weeks late because the first frost we wanted to wait for was so long coming. According to NfG, Germany’s largest eleven-meter-long cultivator (see photo above) is supposed to help.
Upgrade the forest near the Gigafactory
While the pines were primarily grown on the Gigafactory site cleared for industrial use, the make up forest is said to be of higher quality. On Tesla’s 50 hectares from last fall, the proportion of deciduous trees was about 70 percent, according to NfG, and in the new run it should be a little higher according to initial experience. According to Szaramovich, there are currently no further orders for afforestation outside the first 294 hectares. However, according to the Brandenburg State Forestry Office, Tesla also applied for and received a revaluation of about 130 hectares of mono-pine planting near the electric car plant with new deciduous tree plantations and acquired it as a condition.