Company: Global Battery Alliance (GBA)
Founder: Eurasian Resources Group, Umicore, BASF, Pact and others
Website: https://www.globalbattery.org/
About Global Battery Alliance (GBA)
The Global Battery Alliance is the biggest multi-stakeholder consortium of its kind in the energy storage space, working to establish a sustainable and circular battery value chain worldwide by 2030. A not-for-profit organisation, the GBA brings together over 135 international organisations, NGOs, businesses, academia and government bodies to drive positive systemic change across the value chain. Co-founded by several organisations, the GBA now includes Audi, BASF, Eurasian Resources Group, Glencore, Tesla, UNICEF, and the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, among others.
As a clean and reliable energy source, batteries play a pivotal role in achieving the low-carbon transition. However, batteries are material and resource-intensive, meaning their production and usage are associated with ESG issues such as child labour, human rights violations, land degradation, and hazardous waste.
Established in 2017, the GBA operates in accordance with its Ten Guiding Principles that call for establishing a circular battery value chain, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, creating new jobs and economic value, and safeguarding human rights and economic development. It provides a collaborative platform for its members to pool their expertise and achieve these shared goals.
In 2023, at Davos, the GBA unveiled the world’s first-ever pilots for a Battery Passport, its flagship initiative, with significant contributions from Tesla and Audi and their supply chains. The Battery Passport establishes a digital twin of a physical battery, providing information about all applicable ESG and lifecycle requirements based on a comprehensive definition of a sustainable battery. It will contain data about the battery’s ESG performance, manufacturing history, and provenance to advance battery life extension, enable recycling and trigger improvement actions across the value chain. The initiative will see data collected and exchanged among all authorised lifecycle stakeholders.
Besides the proof-of-concept for its Battery Passport, the GBA has also launched several key performance indicators – the Greenhouse Gas Rulebook, Child Labour Index and Human Rights Index. This helps to provide globally harmonised frameworks for sustainability performance expectations for batteries and ensure data is standardised, comparable and measurable.
The concept of a Battery Passport has already been endorsed by the U.S. and Canadian administrations. The EU is set to make battery passports mandatory from 2026, with other regions likely to follow. Accordingly, the launch of the GBA’s Battery Passport is more important than ever. As the first and only passport to be developed by stakeholders spanning the entire value chain, it acts as the standard bearer for battery transparency.
The GBA is currently working to develop the Battery Passport mechanisms for performance scoring, data governance, assurance and verification. It aims to eventually issue a quality seal for batteries.
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