Author: Shen Accumulators news Center Source: high-tech lithium

Into 2023, the battery passport has become a new trend in the industry.

In March, Zeng Yuqun, chairman of Ningde Times, as a representative of the 14th National People's Congress, submitted a proposal to "carry out research on China's power battery passport and supporting policies, and strengthen the whole life cycle management of battery products".

He pointed out that China's battery passport should be studied and designed as soon as possible for the actual needs of carbon footprint, ESG, recycling traceability, and echelon utilization.

Recently, in the face of the investor question of "how to facilitate the end consumer to better use the power battery", Ningde Times once again reiterated that: because the battery passport is a digital twin of the physical battery, consumers can use the battery passport to see the "past life" of their own battery, and clearly compare the good and bad of the battery.

At the Electric Vehicle 100 forum earlier this month, Liang Rui, vice president of Xinwang Da, also pointed out that "the battery passport is essentially a data management system for the battery life cycle, which will bring greater transparency to the global battery value chain."

So, what exactly does a battery passport include? Why has it become a topic of concern for head companies at this point in time? What is the significance of the transformation of the global lithium industry?

The battery passport originated in Europe

Understanding the battery passport can be started from the narrow sense and the broad sense.

The narrowly defined battery passport is an industry initiative first proposed by the Global Battery Alliance (GBA) in 2019.

GBA was established by the World Economic Forum, is the first global battery association, its members cover all aspects of the battery industry chain, to Eurasian Resources Group, Glencore, BASF, Volkswagen and other European giants are the most active.

Since 2021, battery passports have been recognized in international high-level meetings such as the G7 Group and the OECD. In 2022, the German Ministry of Economic Affairs issued 8.2 million euros in funding for local associations, including BMW, Meitco and BASF, to develop industry standards for the carbon footprint of batteries, putting the battery passport on the substantive agenda.

On January 18, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Global Battery Alliance (GBA) released the first battery Passport proof-of-concept results.

It is worth noting that the reason why the battery passport is named as a passport, rather than an ID card, is to highlight its effective cross-border mobility. Therefore, it is essential to establish a unified global certification standard. This is particularly true where the battery passport is linked to market access.

According to the EU's New Battery Law, from 2026, all newly purchased electric vehicle (EV) batteries, light vehicle (LMT) batteries and large industrial batteries, with a single capacity of more than kWh, must have a battery passport to enter the European market.

However, the formulation of transnational rules inevitably involves the inequality of the right to speak in the industrial chain. Judging from the membership structure of GBA, the current battery passport is still a multinational project dominated by the European Union background.

How to ensure that the battery passport is fair and inclusive, so that it can avoid becoming a regional green trade barrier?

Answering that question requires taking a broader view of what battery passports mean and the work that has already been done.

How to define a battery passport

According to GBA's website, the Battery Passport is designed to provide detailed battery manufacturing history and usage information for "all stakeholders involved throughout the life cycle." Its significance lies in the following aspects:

Record the proportion of renewable energy and recycled materials used in the battery production process to facilitate the purchaser to conduct carbon index access audit and regular assessment;

Record the health status of the battery, upload cloud data and issue fault warning to the user in time to extend the service life of the battery and the tool;

The historical information of the battery is traced and scored, and the remaining capacity is accurately displayed, which is convenient for effective circulation in echelon utilization or secondary sales scenarios;

This coincides with the understanding of Liang Rui, vice president of Xinwang Da. At the meeting of 100 People for electric vehicles, Liang Rui pointed out that although the data system of the battery passport looks very complicated, it is actually around two main lines, one is the quality management of the battery's full life cycle, and the other is the carbon management of the battery's full life cycle.

To achieve these two goals, Liang Rui put forward three proposals:

The first is to take measures to carry out quality control of the whole process such as research and development, raw materials, supplier incoming materials, production process, customer finished products and after-sales.

The second is to establish a quality integration digital platform to organically integrate the quality system, business data and information system to achieve end-to-end quality management.

The third is to carry out big data management for the whole life cycle of the battery. Such as the design, manufacturing, operation of power batteries, vehicle maintenance and maintenance, OTA dynamic management and other links, to create a status assessment and safety early warning system. These data can provide strong support in vehicle insurance, secondary transactions, echelon utilization and so on.

It can be seen that in the explanations of all parties, the battery passport eventually appears as an end-to-end, all-in-one "integrated service platform". With this platform, buyers can quality manage upstream supply chains, consumers can view product performance and make purchasing decisions quickly, and governments can track carbon footprints through......

To complete such a huge project, the government and leading enterprises undoubtedly play an important calling role.

On the government side, at the "China 5G+ Industrial Internet Conference" at the end of last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that it had built the national top node of the industrial Internet identification analysis system. This shows that the most core infrastructure required for cross-regional and cross-industry data interoperability has been built.

Earlier this month, the Sichuan-led Tianfu Institute of Big Data International Strategy and Technology held a product launch in Chengdu, where it unveiled the China Open Carbon Footprint Platform (CCFOP) for the first time, which includes eFootprint, an online analysis system for product carbon footprints, and CLCD, a basic database for China's life cycle.

At the same time that the digital infrastructure is gradually improving, GAogong lithium Battery has observed that there are already many enterprises at the head of the industrial chain actively developing the layout.

Chinese companies' efforts on battery passports

In addition to the mandatory access provisions of the new Battery Law, the European Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM, also known as "carbon tariff") was approved by the European Parliament on April 18, and is expected to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union in the near future and enter into force 20 days after publication.

It can be said that the battery passport will become a key factor in the success of domestic battery companies going to Europe.

Therefore, the first batch of enterprises that actively respond to the battery passport in China are enterprises that have a clear internationalization strategy and have created substantial sea results.

In December 2022, Ningde Times was elected to GBA's new board of directors for a term from April 2023 to December 2024 and serves as a member of the Supervisory Committee.

Last year, the German plant of the Ningde Era was officially put into operation, marking the completion of its local supply capacity, while the construction of a second plant in Hungary was also started.

Luoyang Molybdenum Industry, which has a close cooperation with Ningde Times, is also involved in GBA's project. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January this year, the first electric vehicle battery passport displayed by GBA included the ReSource project jointly developed by Luoyang Molybdenum Industry and Glencore and Eurasian Resources Group.

On April 19, 2023, the GBA officially approved Shinwanda to join, and Shinwanda became a new member of the organization.

In addition, Gaogong lithium learned from the relevant people of Green Beauty that Wuhan Power Regeneration, a subsidiary of Green Beauty, is applying to join the GBA, and has continued to cooperate with Ningde Era on the landing of domestic battery passports.

In July last year, Grem issued GDR and was approved for listing in Switzerland, which will provide financial support for the construction of its European battery recycling project.

In terms of industrial chain empowerment, Vision Power Erdos Zero-carbon Industrial Park has laid out a zero-carbon digital certification system based on the intelligent Internet of Things operating system EnOS and Fangneng carbon management platform. While achieving 100% green energy supply, it gives products in the park a "zero-carbon green code" that can be traced, conforms to various international standards and is certified by authoritative institutions.

In other words, the industrial chain enterprises settled in the vision park can produce internationally certified low-carbon and zero-carbon products. It is reported that at present, including FAW Jiefang, Shengvanadium Technology and other upstream and downstream enterprises announced to settle in Ordos zero carbon Industrial Park.

In addition to the power battery industry chain, because a major use of the battery passport is to trace the historical information of the echelon utilization scenario, the field of energy storage has also launched a special study of the battery passport.

In March, Zhongtian Internet and Zhongtian Energy Storage completed a strategic cooperation signing. Zhongtian Internet said that it will combine the attributes of Zhongtian energy storage industry to take the lead in realizing the complete battery passport solution in China; The battery passport gives the unique identification of the energy storage battery, breaking the platform barriers such as MES, dual-carbon platform, and battery operation and maintenance management.

As the battery passport has become an international consensus across domestic and overseas and different racetracks, more companies will take the lead in improving the identification of battery passports in specific regions and scenes in the future to help the unified standards of international adoption.

It is worth mentioning that in order to ensure the openness and transparency of the whole process information and tamper-proof, the introduction of blockchain and artificial intelligence technology will become a necessity, which also makes the battery passport show greater application potential in the future.

At the same time, in the context of the increasingly sophisticated and strict supply chain management of the head enterprise, small and medium-sized enterprises in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain will also participate in the formulation of the battery passport as the main body of responsibility, so that it is truly "from the industry and used by the industry."

Reprinted from http://www.batterychn.com/newinfo-1014-2