Davos/Ingolstadt – The Global Battery Alliance (GBA), the world’s largest multi-stakeholder organization to establish a sustainable battery value chain by 2030, launched the proof of concept for its Battery Passport at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos.
The Battery Passport is a key initiative for the GBA and is designed to facilitate the rapid scaling of sustainable, circular, and responsible battery value chains to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement through electrification of the transport and power sectors. It has been developed over three years by the GBA’s members, who span the global battery value chain from the mine to recycling, including Audi, BASF, CATL, Eurasian Resources Group, Glencore, LG Energy Solution, Umicore, Tesla, Volkswagen AG, and IT solution providers as well as leading non-governmental and international organizations including IndustriALL Global Union, Pact, Transport & Environment, UNEP, UNICEF and many others, with the support of government institutions like the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and Natural Resources Canada.
The Battery Passport establishes a digital twin of a physical battery that conveys information about all applicable sustainability and lifecycle requirements based on a comprehensive definition of a sustainable battery. It will bring new levels of transparency to the global battery value chain by collecting, exchanging, collating, and reporting trusted data among all lifecycle stakeholders on the material provenance, the battery’s chemical make-up, and manufacturing history and its sustainability performance.
The GBA’s Battery Passport is unique as it is a key instrument to implement a global vision of sustainable, responsible, and circular battery value chains, based on data that is standardized, comparable, and auditable. Its ultimate goal is to provide end-users with a quality seal based on the battery’s sustainability performance, according to reporting rules agreed by stakeholders from industry, academia, non-governmental organizations, and government.
For the first time, the GBA unveiled the illustrative results of its Battery Passport proof of concept at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos. Publicly available on the Global Battery Alliance’s website, the prototype battery passports include example data from Audi and Tesla and their value chain partners relating to the battery’s technical specifications, material provenance, and reporting against key sustainability performance indicators. This includes partial reporting of the battery’s carbon footprint and child labor and human rights performance, according to rulebooks developed by members of the Global Battery Alliance for select materials, as well as information on the data collection across different steps of the value chains.
By establishing this proof of concept, the Global Battery Alliance and its members are demonstrating how, by putting this data in the hands of end-users, the Passport will enable customers to make more informed purchasing decisions and drive sustainable sourcing, processing, and manufacturing practices in the industry in the future. The concept of a Battery Passport has already been endorsed at the 2021 G7 Leaders’ Meeting.
