As the adoption of electric vehicles rises, managing retired batteries in a sustainable and profitable way becomes ever more important. Digital battery passports are proving to be a critical tool for accelerating the recycling and reuse of EV batteries by improving data transparency and enabling circular economy practices across the battery value chain.
This article explains how battery passports support recycling, second‑life applications, residual value assessment and regulatory compliance, with special emphasis on the contributions of the EU‑funded BASE project.
How Battery Passports Improve Recycling Efficiency
Battery passports offer verified, standardised information on a battery’s chemical composition and dismantling characteristics that recyclers need. Rather than relying on costly sampling, this data enables more accurate pre‑processing. According to Systemiq and the Battery Pass consortium, access to dismantling and composition information can reduce recycling pre‑treatment and processing costs by about ten to twenty per cent. This also improves throughput and material recovery rates.
These passports support the EU’s regulatory recycling targets, which require a minimum 70 per cent recovery rate for lithium‑ion batteries by 2030, as well as high cobalt and nickel recovery rates. Without precise data on composition and treatment, these targets risk being difficult to meet.
Facilitating Second‑Life Applications
A major benefit of battery passports is that they simplify the determination of residual value. Performance history, such as state of health and internal resistance, helps second‑life operators assess whether a retired battery is suitable for reuse or should be recycled. This data can reduce their need for independent testing by two to ten per cent, enabling more batteries to enter second‑life use cases such as stationary energy storage.
Prolonging battery life through repurposing conserves raw materials, avoids waste, and reduces emissions compared with immediately recycling a battery whose remaining life would still be useful.
Supporting Circular Economy Goals through Compliance
Under the EU’s Battery Regulation, manufacturers must submit a third‑party verified carbon footprint declaration from February 2025 and comply with rising material recovery targets. Although the full battery passport becomes mandatory in February 2027, the earlier carbon reporting requirement serves as a precursor and helps familiarise stakeholders with traceability processes.
Battery passports also provide links to recycled content, supply chain due diligence, human rights assessments, dismantling instructions and ESG data. These elements help ensure batteries meet environmental, social and governance standards. BASE
The Role of BASE in Driving Impact
The EU-funded BASE Project (Battery Passport for Resilient Supply Chain and Implementation of Circular Economy) is developing and validating a production-ready Digital Battery Passport (DBP) platform. BASE emphasises secure traceability of critical raw materials, interoperable data exchange, privacy‑by‑design, and AI or analytical tools to generate performance, safety and circularity indicators.
BASE integrates physical traceability methods such as mass balancing with digital ledger technology to prevent data duplication and ensure authenticity along the value chain. This approach supports compliance, improves recycling and fosters second‑life optimisation.
The project will test the DBP through four pilot use cases covering battery manufacturing, reuse, recycling logistics and end‑of‑life processing. BASE contributes harmonised ESGE (Environmental, Social, Governance, Economic) and 4R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose) indicators and analytical tools to support circular business models.
BASE’s work also supports industry uptake by developing performance and safety indicators, dismantling guidelines, and lifecycle toolkits that reduce processing barriers for SMEs and recyclers.
Broader Industry Developments
The Battery Pass consortium, co‑funded by Germany’s BMWK, has quantified benefits related to battery passports and circularity. Their analysis shows recycling cost savings of around ten to twenty per cent and reduced procurement costs for reuse operators. They also suggest that passport data could help meet up to five to twenty per cent of Europe’s future EV battery material demand through end‑of‑life collection.
Separately, automakers like Volvo plan to issue battery passports ahead of regulatory deadlines. Volvo’s solution includes blockchain‑based tracking of material origin, carbon emissions, recycled content and state of health over fifteen years. This early adoption reflects growing recognition of passports as strategic tools for transparency and reuse.
Conclusion
Battery passports are transforming how EV batteries are managed from first use to end of life. By consolidating verified data on composition, performance and recycling instructions, they support more efficient recycling and second‑life reuse—while ensuring compliance with circular economy targets. Projects like BASE are crucial in building interoperable, secure, and scalable platforms that make these benefits a reality. As the EV market expands, battery passports will play a vital role in accelerating the transition towards a sustainable circular battery economy.
References
- Systemiq & Battery Pass consortium. The Value of the EU Battery Passport. SYSTEMIQ+1
- BASE‑BatteryPassport.com. Objectives and Impact of BASE Project. BASE
- ScienceDirect. Digital product passports and circular battery management. ScienceDirect+2SYSTEMIQ+2
- RMI. Policy enabling circular battery economy. RMI
- Nature (2024). Reuse reduces lifecycle impacts. Nature
- NineSigma. Business trends in EV battery recycling and reuse. ninesigma.com
- Reuters. Volvo issues first EV battery passport ahead of EU rules. Reuters