The Background

The battery passport will help align industries with the goals of the Paris Agreement by 2030. With the Paris Agreement signed by the European Union and 188 states, governments will increasingly turn to electricity and batteries to achieve the goals of the agreement. The passport will also be an indicator of the intention of governments and companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, prevent human rights violations by removing companies that use child labor from the supply chain, reuse, repurpose and recycle batteries as raw materials, and reach the ideals of circular economy and green deal.

The European Union enacts a series of directives to regulate the achievement of these goals. One of these directives, Battery Directive 2006/66/EC, was the first time the concept of “battery passport” was mentioned. With this regulation, electronic records (Battery Passport) are required for all batteries with a capacity of 2kWh or more. Each battery shall be identified by a unique product identifier. The passport will be linked to the basic features of each battery type and model stored in the data sources of the system to be established pursuant to Article 64 and will be accessible online. The passport will provide access to information on the performance and durability parameters values specified in Article 10(1). In addition, during the production of the batteries, the records of carbon emissions and responsible sourcing information will also be kept with the battery passport.

Batch-level identification of raw materials and intermediate products is also required;

  • To track and trace a battery within the circular value chain from cradle to cradle.
  • To calculate a battery’s carbon emissions during its production

Economic operators like mining companies, manufacturers, recyclers, and importers are in the scope of the regulation. Therefore, those bodies should also be identified.