Environmental Details at GigaMexico
Tesla’s newly announced gigafactory facility in Nuevo Leon, Mexico is setting up for construction - and that involves a lot of contracts and promises between the company and the local government.
Tesla formally announced the new facility at their Investor Day event on March 1st. The EV company has proposed a $5 billion USD gigafactory - which is to be built on about 4200 acres of land just outside the city of Monterrey.
Some of the biggest things to hash out before such a major project breaks ground is how the local environment will be protected - details that impose some responsibilities on the company in order to get the permits to build.
In Germany for instance, Tesla ended up having to promise to plant a certain amount of trees to offset the losses to the forest that GigaBerlin was built on - even though that forest was made explicitly to be cut down for industrial use.
Tesla ended up promising to plant almost triple the trees they cut down - and even added a variety of trees instead of just the pines that were seeded for industrial use.
Now, in a similar fashion, Tesla has promised to double the required number of trees when they replant on the Nuevo Leon site - according to the Governor. A translation of his announcement reads:
“[...] I spoke with [Tesla’s] director and he guaranteed me that they will reforest the area of Santa Catarina, where the gigafactory will be installed, with double the number of trees required by law on 1,600 hectares of land.”
A quick glance shows the site is actually pretty barren, however, so Tesla might very well decide to add in more local varieties, and keep a healthy amount of scrub around the facility once it’s done.
But to do that, they also have to deal with the water concerns.
The site Tesla chose is very high and dry. It butts up against a highland area that clearly used to have a river running through it. You can see the dried up bed in the Tesla renderings of the finished factory that looks a little like a dirt road.
But we know from previous statements made by local officials that no one is particularly concerned with the large amount of water use that Tesla will need to run their Gigafactory.
This is likely because Tesla’s license to build on that land includes a stipulation demanding they bring water into the area from somewhere close by.
This isn’t an uncommon practice in land development - using companies to build out local utilities in return for the use of land is a smart way for both sides to get what they want.
But it’s not always as easy as that. Apparently, the land Tesla bought had been earmarked for a Six Flags theme park back in 2015, but evidently they couldn’t get the funds they would need to bring in all the utilities a theme park requires, so it stayed empty until Tesla bought it.
Some engineering-capable Tesla fans have suggested that Tesla has the funding needed to build a robust water delivery system between the Rio Grande river to the north, and a local aquifer to the south - which is quite a large project, but also not impossible - and could actually be the best idea to set GigaMexico up for later expansion.
Not to mention that bringing water into the area would go a long way to greening the area up.
More importantly, the new factory is expected to drastically increase the value of cross-border trade once it gets up and running. Logistics experts are reporting supply companies are already preparing to move into the Monterrey area to support the new factory, and Tesla will create up to 6000 new jobs in just the first phase of operation.
Mexico’s Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs - Martha Delgado Peralta - estimated that the increase in exports to the US would be about 3.5% annually - or $15 Billion USD. That alone is more than enough money for the government to maybe help fund a new aqueduct project - or anything else the Gigafactory needs to function.
All things told, it looks like Tesla will clear these first environmental hurdles without much trouble. They have a solid plan that will greatly benefit the local area - environmentally and civically - and they have a reputation for taking good care of the places they build on.
It’ll be interesting to see Tesla turn this desert highland into something more like their renders.