Setting the standard

Designed to combat questionable practices, ensure adherence to agreed standards and targets across the entire battery value chain, a new Battery Passport trial has been announced by the Global Battery Alliance (GBA).

As a member of the GBA, Audi has been a driver in the development of the passport trial system which will cover all aspects of the battery production process from material sourcing, processing and manufacturing of batteries as well as looking at issues of child labour and human rights violations along the value chain. 

The GBA’s Battery Passport is unique in creating a global vision of sustainable, responsible and circular battery value chains, using data that is standardised and auditable. Essentially its ultimate goal is to provide end-users with effectively a quality seal of approval, so that end-users can rest assured that the battery has been produced with the highest standards in place from the mining of the precious metals used, right through the manufacturing process and on to the eventful recycling of the battery at the end of its life.

These are areas often cited by critics of electric vehicles (EVs), who claim that the emissions produced in the production process and the human rights violations committed in the sourcing of the raw materials negate the environmental gains of electric mobility.

By establishing a strict system of reporting that adheres to agreed high standards by those involved in each area of the process, those potential pitfalls can be avoided and end users assured of the provenance of their battery from the very start.

To that end, the passport is the culmination of three years of work by GBA members from all areas of the battery supply chain. They include some of the biggest names in the industry and include government and international humanitarian bodies. As well as Audi and Volkswagen AG, members include Glencore, BASF, LG Energy Solution, Tesla, UNICEF, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, and Natural Resources Canada to name just a few.

The prototype battery passports which are publicly available, include example data from Audi and Tesla and their value chains partners relating to the battery’s technical specifications, material provenance and reporting against key sustainability performance indicators. 

By establishing this proof of concept, the Global Battery Alliance and its members will enable customers to make more informed purchasing decisions and drive sustainable sourcing, processing and manufacturing practices in the industry in the future.

Indeed a Battery Passport will become a mandatory requirement in the EU by 2026 with other regions likely to follow, which makes the launch of the GBA’s Battery Passport more important than ever to provide a global framework for sustainability performance in the future.

Now that the passport pilot has been officially announced, the GBA members will continue to work on the comprehensive set of rules, verification and means of performance scoring. Ultimately, this will allow for batteries to be benchmarked against the GBA’s verifiable definition of a sustainable and responsible battery in the future, identifying those that are best and worst in class and tracking progress in the industry through the issuance of a GBA quality seal for batteries.