Creating a digital passport to track battery materials, optimize battery performance and life, validate recycling, and promote a new business model based on data sharing (Batt4EU Partnership)

Stakeholders engaged with the battery value chain need to be provided with accurate, reliable and immutable battery information e.g. related to ESGE (Environmental, Social, Governance & Economic) indicators and monitor thermal runaway at any stage of the value chain. Furthermore, the proposed Batteries Regulation^[1] and future regulations will extend the due diligence to all domains of the battery value chain in the upcoming years. The EU Data Strategy is setting a clear architectural approach to federated data and is enabling a great opportunity to boost the EU dataspace on batteries.

The availability of shared, interoperable, and trusted data for improving recycling and second life application might promote new business, assuring workforce and transportation safety. Indicators such as SoH (State of Health), SoS (State of Safety), SoP (State of Power) should be calculated in accurate, reliable, immutable, and standardized way, based on historical data (usage profile, working temperatures, etc.) of the battery or cells.

The project is expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• A European economic base which is stronger, more resilient, competitive and fit for the green and digital transitions, by reducing strategic dependencies for critical raw materials by promoting resource efficiency.
• A Digital Product Passport (DPP), a proper tracking and blockchain solution, DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology)-solution or an equivalent solution that allows for built-in data authenticity verification, along the value chain, with no data duplication, avoiding data manipulation assuring privacy by design, with a low power consumption and promoting data interoperability.
• A set of transparent calculation methods for the relevant battery indicators stored in the DPP, which can be used as a base to set future standards.
• A demonstration of new business models in the different parts of the battery value chains and of circular data extraction, based on data sharing.
• The improvement of the battery transportation and workforce safety.
• A solution which has been tested throughout the entire battery value chain.
• At least 2 real life pilots capable to exploit data generated by DPP and to test two of the innovative solutions proposed.

The project is also encouraged to address some of the following outcomes:

• Improvement of the recycling efficiency (more than one material).
• Promotion of sustainability and circularity through the adoption of 4R methodological approach Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle.
• Boost of the use of recycled and reusable material to reduce energy usage/CO2 footprint.
• Increase of competitiveness of the European battery industry across the value chain (from mines and refiners to cell manufacturers to cell integrators).
• Streamlined compliance with the proposed Batteries Regulation and EU federated dataspace.

The project outcomes are expected to:

• Be applicable to 3 or more use cases among the main transport or mobile applications (such as road, waterborne, airborne and rail transport, as well as non-road mobile machinery and industrial applications), with the aim to maximize the impact on the European industry.
• Also be applicable to stationary energy storage applications.

The project is expected to:

• Promote the adoption of a downstream development and implementation of a battery pack Digital Product Passport (DPP) at minimum subset design system level addressing raw materials (at least anode and cathode critical raw materials), cells and modules, which is both scalable and energy efficient.
• Be able to facilitate real-time data recognition for different indicators and at local device - even when the battery ceases to be part of the Energy Storage System (ESS).
• Consider the key performance indicators proposed by Batteries Europe or by the dedicated Partnerships, reflected in the Partnership Strategic Research Agenda (SRA), to guide the technology developments on the application segments and use cases that will be selected. Contribute to the related regulation standards.
• Engage a variety of stakeholders along the whole battery value chain to assure the continuous traceability and assure that accountability will not be lost from raw or recycled raw material to first and second life and recycling.

The suggested blockchain, DLT, or equivalent, solutions are requested to demonstrate trustworthy tracking. The project is encouraged to:

• Validate its interoperable data sharing strategy by adopting a unique battery data space and testing of interoperability between different subsystems (mobility, energy, etc.) is encouraged.
• Develop a safety second life-battery certification protocol, and hazard alerts system to assure liability and protection during transport, and second use.
• Validate new business models, capable to demonstrate improvement in remanufacturing, repurposing and recycling.
• Aim for cross-sectorial applications
• Focus on the lithium-ion battery chemistries currently on the market - or reaching the market in the short term, with the potential to quickly adapt to next-generation battery chemistries and assess its safety tracking.

Projects need to be compliant with the following EU strategy and regulations framework:

1. Green Deal and in particular Circular Economy Action Plan’s Sustainable Product Initiative,
2. the EU Digital strategy’s Circular Electronics Initiative and,
3. the EU Data strategy,
4. Upcoming regulation on Batteries.

Plans for the exploitation and dissemination of results for proposals submitted under this topic should include a strong business case and sound exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination. The exploitation plans should include preliminary plans for scalability, commercialisation, and deployment (feasibility study, business plan).

Proposals should interface with the project(s) funded under the topic DIGITAL-2021-TRUST-01-DIGIPASS “Digital Product Passport: sustainable and circular systems” and notably its activities regarding batteries. They should also establish cooperation and complementarity with the selected proposal under the topic HORIZON-CL4-2022-RESILIENCE-01-05 “Technological solutions for tracking raw material flows in complex supply chains”, which is tracking raw material flows for batteries value chains and others.

They should furthermore establish collaboration with the partnership “Battery Passport” under the Global Battery Alliance^[2]. In order to achieve the expected outcomes, international cooperation is encouraged, in particular with the USA, Japan and South Korea.

Proposals could consider the involvement of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) whose contribution could consists of providing added value regarding various aspects of battery sustainability, performance or safety.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on Batteries (Batt4EU). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on the results to the European Partnership on Batteries (Batt4EU) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 7 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

[1]COM(2020) 798 final, Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning batteries and waste batteries, repealing Directive 2006/66/EC and amending Regulation (EU) No 2019/1020

[2] https://www.globalbattery.org/battery-passport/