Tesla just got their Giga Berlin factory up and running after months of delays, and now the company is facing a potential shutdown.
According to reporting by Berliner-Kurier, Brandenburg’s Green Parliamentary group said if Germany decides to stop deliveries of Russian gas, Tesla’s plant will need to shut down. The reasoning for this is that 60 per cent of the plant’s energy requirements depend on gas.
The group leader, Benjamin Raschke said that consumers and citizens would have ‘absolute protection’ from a gas shut off. While larger industrial projects, like Tesla’s Giga Berlin, would be “the first to shut down and have to do without”.
Germany is currently in the midst of a struggle with the Kremlin over their invasion of Ukraine. Yesterday, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck announced the country is putting the German subsidiary of Gazprom under trusteeship. He told Politico that:
“The government is doing what is necessary to ensure security of supply in Germany — this includes not exposing energy infrastructures in Germany to arbitrary decisions by the Kremlin”
However, Tesla is not the sole example of an industrial project that could face shutdowns. The German government used a cement plant in Rüdersdorf and a chemical plant in Schwarzheide as other examples.
Tesla did not provide a comment on the potential shut down.
