June 21, 2024: The EU Battery Passport scheme, set to come into effect in February 2027, could add as much as $3 per kWh to the price of lithium packs, according to a presentation at The Battery Show, held this week in Stuttgart, Germany.
Paul Beach, president of Octillion a lithium ion battery manufacturer, said that he could see the cost of the EU scheme — part of the EU Battery Regulation introduced in July last year —conceivably adding between $2 to $3/kWh when it comes into force.
Beach, who had been the motivating force in dealing with the varied challenges of setting up large lithium battery plants across India, said the extra cost could only be guessed given the number of vagaries involved.
In the UK, one media report suggested that adherence to the new regime would cost up to £11 ($14) per EV battery.
The technical aspects of how to administer the scheme are still under development, so costs at this stage can only be speculative.
The digital documents contained in the passport will be linked to the vehicle identification number and a QR code. These can be scanned and will reveal detailed information about the source of the raw materials before manufacturing, along with post-manufacturing details, such as capacity and condition of the battery.
This will allow the complete life of the battery to be available from sourcing to disposal and will be an obligatory document to be held by insurers and battery and car OEMs. Supply chain visibility will also enable European regulators to monitor conformity to rules over CO2 emissions and recycling set out in the EU’s much-trumpeted Green Deal.
The move is part of the new EU Battery Regulation, which requires the battery or vehicle manufacturer to disclose the carbon emissions from production and gradually include greater proportions of recycled materials in the run-up to 2035, when the EU will ban sales of new ICE cars.
The new Battery Regulation sets a target for lithium recovery from waste lithium-ion batteries of 50% by the end of 2027 and 80% by the end of 2031.
It also provides for mandatory minimum levels of recycled content for industrial, SLI batteries and EV batteries. These are initially set at 16% for cobalt, 85% for lead, 6% for lithium and 6% for nickel. These are later to be raised to cobalt 26%, lead 85%, lithium 12% and nickel 15%.
The Regulation included provisions for the European Commission to revise in 2028 when more information about the market availability of battery grade recycled material would be known.
However, the recycled content target levels proposed in the Battery Regulation had been set by political will rather than expert analysis.
“The consultants who advised the Commission wanted to set more realistic, achievable targets than these, but their views were overruled during the political process,” said Steve Binks, technical director at the ILA, speaking at the Asia Battery Conference in September 2023.
The introduction of the passport has been a major pre-occupation of automotive OEMs who realise that unless new batteries conform to the regulation, their cars cannot be sold, according to a spokesperson at AVI which has spent the last year and more developing the product.
To preserve intellectual property, manufacturers will be able to access the full scope of information in a battery passport but other parties will be limited in what they can see. The buyer of the EV will be able to see some of the data as will the recycler.
Lead SLI batteries will not require a passport although lead batteries for industrial battery use will require one.
Outside the EU, battery passports can be used for different purposes and although they won’t be required in the US, they can serve as evidence that an electric car qualifies for Clean Vehicle Tax Credits, worth several thousand dollars depending on the vehicle and its emissions.
