European Union’s mandatory Battery Passport sustainability effort starts to take shape

The first publicly available guidance on the European Union’s Battery Passport has been released by the consortium tasked with supporting the flagship sustainability and transparency effort.

Part of the European Union (EU) directive on batteries which the bloc is introducing in phases in the coming years, the passport would make all components and materials used in batteries tracked and traceable in a central ledger.

The ledger will include information about the devices’ carbon footprint, safety certification and supply chain due diligence, among other metrics.

While the wider directive includes requirements for batteries to include an increasing proportion of recycled content and stringent carbon emissions reporting, the passport is perhaps the most radical of the directive’s proposed regulations. It would be Europe’s first-ever digital product passport (DPP) of any kind.

The Battery Pass Consortium, convened to support the implementation of the Battery Passport, officially handed over its new guidance to German parliamentary state secretary Michael Kellner of the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) at the Hannover Messe industry fair.

Led by technology and information systems design company SystemIQ with 11 German industry partners including Audi, BMW Group and BASF, the consortium was formed in 2022 with a three-year remit that encompassed creating a demonstrator passport and creating content and technical standards.

Kellner said the guidance “will help companies developing battery passports to shape these efficiently and in accordance with EU law”.

“It may also be a sound foundation for the evolution of digital product passports in general which will be rolled out in other sectors in the future.”