Battery Pass Consortium Publishes First Content Guidance on the EU Battery Passport

Hannover, 17 April 2023
A consortium of eleven leading international organisations from industry, technology, science and civil society has today launched the first publicly available Content Guidance on the EU Battery Passport. It is designed to support the implementation of the battery passport as mandated by the new EU Battery Regulation in a way that is feasible for industry players while guaranteeing the environmental and economic benefits of a digital product passport.
Published by the Battery Pass project with co-funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), the Content Guidance primarily addresses organisations responsible for implementing the battery passport (“responsible economic operators”) and other battery value chain participants. It aims to provide a timely and comprehensive guidance on how to achieve compliance with the Battery Regulation and enable increased sustainability and circularity.
The Content Guidance was officially handed over at Hannover Messe to Michael Kellner, Parliamentary State Secretary, BMWK, in a ceremony hosted as part of the Ministry’s stage programme on ‘Funding focus “Battery cell production in Germany”. Sustainable battery cell production – a cornerstone for the climate-friendly mobility of the future’.
In a bid to provide transparency and support for the industry and the wider battery passport ecosystem, the Content Guidance:
- aggregates, interprets and assesses the content requirements mandated by the EU Battery Regulation. This includes highlighting unclarities and inconsistencies of the legal text and scope as well as ensuring a reasonable balancing of sustainability objectives with industry feasibility;
- explores further key regulatory frameworks such as the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, to highlight harmonisation potentials with other legislations; and
- suggests additional value-adding aspects beyond the mandatory regulatory scope to enable increased sustainability and circularity.
The Content Guidance is complemented by two further documents: a compact and user- friendly Battery Passport Data Longlist comprising the ~90 mandatory data attributes outlined in the EU Battery Regulation as well as voluntary suggestions; and rules for calculating the carbon footprint of the “Distribution” and “End-of-life and recycling” life cycle stages of batteries. The latter was developed in collaboration with the Global Battery Alliance (GBA) to complement the already published GBA GHG Rulebook (version 1.4). The combination of both documents provides the first cradle-to-grave Product Carbon Footprint Rulebook designed for establishing a circular battery economy and is the basis for guiding companies to collect and aggregate company-specific product carbon footprint data that enable real-world emissions reduction (to be published in parallel by the GBA as version 1.5).
Over the course of 2023, the Battery Pass project will explore how to further evolve the Content Guidance in collaboration with other stakeholders. Meanwhile it will focus on shaping the first technical reference framework in accordance with EU requirements. This will allow any economic operator and other battery passport frameworks to develop compliant and interoperable passports.
The Battery Passport Content Guidance is available here.
About the Project Grant Agreement
This project receives funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action by resolution of the German Bundestag under grant agreement No BZF335.
Further Information
Battery Pass
Circular Economy Initiative
Resource-Efficient Battery Life Cycles – Driving Electric Mobility with the Circular Economy