Adaptation of EU Battery Regulation

As vehicles running on batteries are becoming more common, there is a high demand to improve national and international laws and regulations to improve the battery lifecycle transparency. The newly published European Green Deal, with the so-called European Union (EU) Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities Regulation (EU) 2024/1253, aims to reach climate neutrality by 2050 and reduce transport emissions by 90%. The regulation replaces the German Battery Act and expects industries to gain and provide access to battery information. The European Battery Alliance (EBA), launched in 2017, plans to create its own competitive and sustainable battery cell manufacturing value chain. The estimated market annual value is up to €250 billion by 2025. The purpose of EBA is to ensure that Europe benefits from the technological evolution in the electric vehicle market and beyond. The action plan includes cleaner and more sustainable vehicles as well as safer traffic operations across Europe. This study aims to research and propose an information management model related to, for example, battery categories (battery vs. assembled product), certification, information limitations (e.g., public and competitor sensitive data), reverse engineering, and second life battery usage. For research purposes, the existing regulation is investigated, and it is compared with the expectations in the regulatory roadmap. As a result, there is a proposal for a battery lifecycle information management system framework through the product lifecycle. The framework could be taken as a basis in industries when designing and implementing their data management systems in existing or new ecosystems. Findings show that there is much to develop for data collection, data availability, and data interpretation, before a common framework that fulfills the legal obligations is achieved. There is a role for every stakeholder with different levels of capabilities to fulfill these obligations, and this leaves opportunities for national and international players to find ways to integrate management systems to co-operate through the product value chain.