 Good morning, everyone My name is David Gavis. I'm a reporter at the New York Times and I'm part of the climate team there Several years ago in 2017, which is a year. We'll come back to in just a moment The New York Times decided we were gonna found a climate team with the express intent of Marshall in the New York Times resources across the globe to really focus on how it is industry Countries we're gonna actually make this march toward net zero and a more circular economy I joined the team last year with a specific focus on the intersection of the private sector and Public policy looking for those multi-stakeholder solutions public private partnerships that we're gonna help get us there And so today it's very exciting to be talking about an effort that began here at the Weff six years ago in 2017 As well that is delivering real results and so we're here to talk about the launch of the Global Battery Passport and the GBA Alliance and to do that we have a terrific panel and some of the people involved in it we've got Dr. Martin Brudenmiller the chairman of BASF Benedict Sabotka the CEO of Eurasian Resources Group and Dame Ellen MacArthur of the MacArthur Foundation Champion of the circular economy will have closing remarks from Inga Peterson Who's the executive director of the Global Battery Alliance? Thank you all for being here so as discussed the This idea was really founded right here Six years ago now and since then there's been real traction The idea was to create a format a way to actually track what's inside batteries Their life cycle where those minerals and other components came from and what would be done with them When their life cycle at the end of that initial product was done It was a great idea But the question was was it actually going to come to fruition and today we're very excited I know Inga and some of her partners are extremely excited to say that it is Finally today launching the first proof of concept with the world's first battery passport on the way in there are QR codes And I think you can scan and actually have access to that first passport But that alone of course isn't going to be enough we need regulations to make this a reality and make this ubiquitous and It was in December that the European Council and the European Parliament provisionally agreed on Regulations that will make these mandatory starting in 2026 so this is going to be something that all manufacturers of large-scale EV batteries and up are going to be expected to be having associated with their products in the near future and this could go global the inflation reduction act in the US Which was just passed of course Finally committing $370 billion of federal funds in the United States to the fight against climate change Also includes guidance that will make it very likely that the United States will have to adopt Something like a global battery passport as well So this is real and we are here on its birthday to really see it into the world so First I would love to turn to you Martin You've been involved in this effort from the absolute get-go and I wonder if you could just talk about the need for it Especially from a corporate perspective as we were talking earlier I made the remark that these are sometimes well-intentioned ideas that come from you know activists, but Your involvement and your sustained commitment to it suggests that there's a real market for it and a need for it from the commercial perspective as well Well, I mean, I think it's very clear that batteries are key for the energy transition So there will not be any energy transition without batteries in the same moment We all know that this is a quite resource energy and and material intensive Play which also inevitably involves also social and environmental impact and that certainly includes Greenhouse gas emissions that are coming with the materials Working process But it is also the issues of child labor and also human rights violations that come with these materials where these materials actually are We have to tackle that as an industry as I think as society because there will be a massive growth in this industry if we want to achieve the Emobility targets so we have just recently with McKinsey looked at a little bit of the data and it looks like it is quite Real that we might have growth rates of up to 30% until 2030 in this business and Involving all the whole value chain. We're talking about more than 400 billion Of value and a market size of 4.7 terawatt hours of battery capacity So there will be a lot of players involved and it's very evident if we want to design this value chain That battery supplies a sustainable battery supply, but also a life sign end of life strategies Play a key role and I think it is in the absolute interest of everyone to really tackle this and make this Transparent and if you think about if that is done well what we could save actually alone in the electric mobility more than 70 giga tons of co2 until 2050 and we could also if we do the Recycling well most probably save up to 90% of the co2 that is involved in the in the version material. So That is why we actually took that up by I think it's also you said it was incubated in 2017 to have this idea and it was a small group that started and now we ended up with 130 Members in the global battery alliance and they actually comprise not only foundations and government agencies But also companies from automotive for mining from chemicals and from cell manufacturers and even energy companies So and I think this is very clear that that we have to tackle this and this is why I'm very happy that We came along to design and have agreed on 10 guiding principles that bring transparency and also show actually how we can tackle the different Important topics and this is also why my company as a as a player in this field is strongly interested in in running a Sustainable Value chain and I think at a very end it goes down to the end consumer who wants to have transparency Indeed. Thank you very much for that. Let's drill down into the details Benedict. Can you talk a bit more about how this actually works? You've been involved in the development What are the actual details of this? How is it going to look from the? OEM side how our consumers and people who are curious about what's actually in what they're buying going to use this The the battery passport is is a perfect example of The magic that can happen at the world's economic forum because what started around a little coffee table Just looking upon Lake Geneva in 2017 turn out to be Bringing us to the world's largest Organization in the energy storage space that tells you and I encourage everyone at the forum is to think about the coffee table as The incubator for potentially great ideas that can have a big impact And I like the battery passport which is the flagship initiative of of the global battery lines among a few other projects that we work on It's because it is very tangible it delivers impact It's not just a conversation is actually something that consumers will be able to use to differentiate What went into the battery into the electric vehicle that they will be purchasing so it gives consumers choice? They can choose a battery that has a lower or a higher co2 footprint They can choose a battery that contains minerals that have been mined sustainably or not And it's that kind of pressure that is going to really have an impact because once you give people a choice They will make choices and they will push in addition to what we do as the as the industry we push for certain standards They will pull for those stands to be adopted very quickly So the battery passport is essentially a digital twin of the physical battery. That's in the car Right sounds pretty simple It's not because you've got dozens of minerals in that in that product with very very diverse sources of orange So what we've tried to do is really to work towards something that gives a very tangible Overview of the current batteries. We've got three pilots One from Tesla two from Audi you funny enough you when you go around in the and down in Davos here Some of the cars already have that sticker on it So you can people can actually go now and scan the sticker and I have a little sticker here is to show you how it looks like My ambition is that ten years from now every single electric vehicle has a sticker like that on the back I don't even go and scan and I let me see where that cobalt comes from. What was it refined again? Interesting right because it triggers the right discussions and particularly if you do not have information on the provenance and The ESG compliance of those products that raises the right questions and it puts pressure on the supply chain to be more sustainable So in the battery passport as you click on it you can open it and open the website It's publicly available. It gives you the technical specification capacity manufacturing history material provenance What are materials flow? How do they move? Do they go through China? Do they not go to China go through different refiners who is actually the manufacturer of the cell of the precursor and so on And it compares that against what we've included is a greenhouse gas Emissions rulebook which has been put together by a broad coalition of multi stakeholders, which is very important This is a multi-stakehold initiative. There's not an industry initiative Which is very important for the acceptance of the standards that we have in this in this in the system The battery password will bring very new levels of transparency in the supply chain From beginning to end you mentioned circularity and recyclability That's going to be an important element of that because we will have to recycle 10 11 12 million tons of battery materials In in the very near future. So the ultimate goal is really provide end user end user transparency That's a quality seal And again this these are the kind of things that can happen around a coffee table in doubles Amazing and and to the point about how it actually works I mean it sounds like we can actually all go see how it works when we walk out of the Congress Center right now Just briefly better. You mentioned these partnerships and developing the proof of concept with Tesla and Audi What did that work actually look like? Can you just take us through some of that development process? Perhaps one of some of the challenges for the global battery alliance and also I suspect real challenges for the Manufacturers as well as they had to navigate some of these new data requirements Maybe dig down into their supply chains in ways that they hadn't before The the most important challenge is that the the energy storage supply chain is highly complex And it's highly globalised. I mean a unit of a battery material may be produced in Africa That would be shipped for refining to China from refining to Korea from Korea to Japan from Japan to the US So you would have a unit of that battery will be going around the world two or three times before it actually ends up in the Vehicle, so it's very complicated and you have a multitude of different products that go in and of course You have to be very clear on what kind of standards do you want to measure you cannot measure everything in the beginning That's what we have piloted. That's why you focused on the most immediate ones, which is CSR particularly human rights Which is a concern in some of the supply chains and greenhouse gas emissions because some products in a battery or some batteries Have a significantly lower co2 footprint than others So the complexity and the globality of that has been one of the big challenge and then of course agreeing on the rules Because we don't want to water down the rules that are being applied to the supply chain quite the opposite We want to raise the standards and to make sure that we raise the bar for the industry as a whole as we built out this supply chain To be a sustainable supply chain. It's the it's the the biggest build-up of a supply chain probably since The hydrocarbon revolution at the end of the 19th century was we're witnessing a transformation in an industry That's been that's that's historic and we have to make sure that's done in a in a sustainable fashion That's great, and you just mentioned things like greenhouse gases child labor Martin as you and the alliance thought about how to measure some of these very difficult metrics How to standardize them across the globe as we heard, you know standards Operations differ vastly from region to region. How did you think about creating something that could actually translate as it were with a? Passport and and come up with a common set of metrics standards that would actually be useful for Consumers and OEMs going forward, and I think this was the key and that was the first obstacles We had to take as a group and actually get together because we have quite some different perspectives But that was also what the working groups did they took all these different experience to actually define a Rule set and let's say a manual How you do that because if we if you compare apples with peers that doesn't help also the consumer and doesn't give the transparency So what actually was done, and I think Benedict just said this there are many many more which we have to do so it is water usage It is it is forced labor its biodiversity which in the long run you have to do But we said what are the two crucial ones from our perspective? And this is really on one hand greenhouse gases and the other part is the the child labor Issue so we have actually in working teams been sitting together and have made I think the first real setup that is Usable in both categories That's more than hundred indicators actually on the child labor part where you can assess How much you go back down to the root cause of that and actually how you can access Assess your own performance in that respect if you go to the greenhouse gas also here We have I think developed a very comprehensive framework to calculate It is a set of about 80 rules a methodology How you actually take this and how you make this in a very comparative way a kind of a manual and I think it is a Methodology that was broadly accepted by the players in the value chain Which is important and as you mentioned it looks like that this is now Making its road in the European part But I think the signs are also good that in the Canadian and in the American environment They will be adopted and at the very end it has to be a global set And I think this is where we are proud because I think the first one that comes sets a little bit the standard That might move a bit then some other parts coming in But I think we have actually made the first step here and I'm very confident that the rules had as we have Defined them makes its world to become really a global standard and Martin I'm always curious as a reporter when I hear Corporations effectively welcoming more regulation as it were effectively asking To be forced to be more transparent Whenever I see that it suggests to me that there is real economic value at the end of a process like this Can you talk about the way in which for big companies for big corporates? This could actually reduce costs at the end of the day if you believe that's the case Well, we don't embrace all kind of regulation There's good and bad ones and I think in something like this the value chain You need that because you want also to well to optimize the value of your product and that ultimately will be only Maximized if actually you you adhere to the standards and you have transparency to the consumers as Benedict said people will make choices later But they have to sure if they pay a higher price that is also everything fine along the value chain So it is in the purest interest also of the commercial player And I think this is also one of the reasons why we moved forward. It is not an altruistic and Idealistic approach only it is also desperately needed to actually orchestrate that chain in terms of Being commercial and competitive it is very much about competitiveness Because certainly the the battery prices have to go down if you want to penetrate electric cars So there is this piece on one end going down, but you want to optimize your value So that is one piece of regulation which we embrace Thank you very much. Ellen. Let's turn to you You've been a champion of the circular economy, which I think several years ago might have still been sort of a somewhat foreign term To many people I feel like it's broken through into the mainstream and and here today We're talking about, you know a real manifestation of regulation of public pride private partnership That is starting to bring, you know the vision of the circular economy into reality Can you talk about how you see something like the battery passport fitting in to this work that you've been sort of beating the drum on for So long and where do you think it goes from here? I think you need to take a step back and look at the whole economy Because I think the battery passport is a great shining light as to what's possible and what the future looks like But when we look at the whole economy and you know, we've been talking about, you know, the future and what's needed The economy has been predominantly linear Manufacturers have been buying raw materials making things and then selling them and once that product is sold that material is lost They have no means of recovering it and in many cases nor has the economy because we don't know what sits within that product They do and when we look at circular economies three principles, we have eliminate waste and pollution Circulate products and materials for as long as possible and then regenerate systems and nature In order to eliminate waste and pollution you need to not create it in the first place And that's a design question and that design question is crucial when it comes to the battery passport because this whole Idea is about illustrating what sits within the product So when you illustrate what sits within the product through a passport, you know where your materials are within the world Therefore they have much less chance of becoming waste because once you've sold it and you've lost it Anyone could end up with that product But this is about keeping the value of that battery because we understand what sits within it And we're then able to recover the materials and feed them back into the economy And then that set set foot into the resilient space, you know, why do businesses want this this this change? Well, actually they need the raw materials of the future to feed into their manufacturing processes So you're building a circular system through the passport to enable the tracking of the materials through digital Enablement to flow back into the system, which is vital for business business needs new raw materials in the future and the other point that was touched on and Martin You mentioned it was the 90% co2 savings through the way that we manufacture batteries. That's massive and when we look at the the the need to shift towards a More climate-friendly economy, we always talk about the energy needs We always talk about where does the energy come from which is vital Which is why we have the electric cars because we know that combustion engines are not the long-term future But when we look at the split as to the the carbon savings of that transition 55% comes from the shifter renewables cleaner energies, but 45% of the targets needed for that 1.5 degrees That's how we make and use things. That's how we make and use batteries That's how we we collect materials and feed them into the economy and that is huge And that's everything. It's not just batteries And I think this is a great example of using digital enablement to track materials within the economy And this will be for everything in the future. This won't just be batteries. It'll be IT equipment. It'll be it'll be Plastics, it'll be Infrastructure we need to know where those materials are to feed them back into the economy not only from a resilience perspective But also from an economic perspective because you know where your stocks and flows are and today we quite simply don't Well an endorsement from Dame Ellen MacArthur means a lot for anyone doing work in the circular economy Or in the corporate world in general Let's turn to Inga Peterson who's the executive director of the Global Battery Alliance who is really championed this work Especially over the last nine months Inga could you talk to us about what some of the challenges have been some of the learnings and also what comes next because it this is a Important day, but it's really just the very beginning Exactly. Thank you so much David and also the panelists I would just like to start by Acknowledging that the organizations involved in launching the world's first part of your passport are true pioneers because they are the first to ask them Sometimes difficult questions about their own performance. So I would just like to officially congratulate all of our members And it is also important to recognize that this achievement wouldn't have been possible Were it not for the countless hours of in-kind expert time that we've benefited from Establishing this proof of concept is a major milestone, but it is only the beginning But we have at the same time already taken away some invaluable lessons from this So just one thing to consider is that a typical value chain for a typical OEM For the automotives may have upwards of 40,000 suppliers So for us to establish end-to-end value chain from cradle to gate mine to OEM Has been a real challenge and we were only able to overcome it due to the trust build amongst the members in the alliance We're all united behind our vision and Interestingly as a result of our pilots despite the early stage one of our participating OEMs For the first time learned about the exact mines. They were sourcing their cobalt from so this immediately triggered Due diligence processes if these materials were actually responsibly sourced So despite it being a proof of concept is already shown its effect. I think what's important is That by creating a harmonized performance standard and framework through the rule books that Martin and Benedict talked about Will really be able to make transparent supply chains the norm Creating the pathway to address the issues that are the most salient and with the urgency that they require Another little point to make is that we've engaged Battery manufacturers that represent over 50% of the global market So we really that gives us confidence that these pilots can set the trend for the industry to as to become the new norm really Now what the process of agreeing the reporting rules be more straightforward and a more homogeneous group in an industry setting? Certainly, but our members are completely committed to this multi stakeholder concept We will build on that and continue building out more comprehensive indicator frameworks including streamlined indicators on circularity for example But critically we also need to work on enabling interoperability with existing standard systems and frameworks and addressing mission critical issues of data governance disclosure commercially sensitive information and data verification So striking this balance between comprehensiveness level of ambition But also a company's ability to implement what we're designing is really the work that we're focusing on and in this way We'll work towards guiding consumer purchasing decisions based on product sustainability performance So I'll just close by also thanking the World Economic Forum for writing the beginning of the G base story for which today We've completed the next chapter. Thank you so much. Thank you Inga. Do we have any questions from the audience? We've got a few minutes Yes, sir, please in the front because material may be taken out and then again put it backs. How do you do that? So that's a question. Maybe I'm Benedict Martin or Inga could take which is at the point of recycling which is of course, you know We're I don't know that any of the batteries clearly that have gotten the passport yet have been recycled yet So some of this may be somewhat theoretical What actually happens? How do you track it and and what happens to that initial battery passport? And is that next battery passport presumably? On a battery that perhaps was actually made with recycled components going to identify all that history of those materials The battery passport assigns a unique Identifiable number to each battery. That's in a car. So that's a big step forward Actually, we'll actually know what kind of a battery is it? What's the chemistry and where is it right? How long has it been used and where is it going to end up? So it's less of a problem today because there are very few batteries that are being recycled Recycling today happens predominantly in the actual manufacturing process because it's today a very wasteful process A lot of materials actually lost in the production of batteries. So I think it's a it's a problem We'll have to solve a little later on But this unique identify will actually allow to find the battery and then Recycle the batteries for as most valuable components one of the challenges today is is you actually cannot recycle a significant part of the battery Right because of the chemical composition because of the materials that don't lend itself to recycling but some you can And I think it's it's a over time We will be finding ways to recycle some of the other materials in the batteries as well the theme for example It's very difficult to recycle today. Whereas cobalt or aluminum is not So it's over time. We'll find a mechanism to do that. But We have a few more years to work on this until these big volumes of of used electric vehicle Batteries will hit the market and I think your question was also the entry point For a new battery has to have the batches of the information where it comes from So it has to have the endpoint of becoming a black mass powder Which is actually engaged in the production again So that in that respect you can track things for a long term and at the very end The nickels and the cobalt will fuel many generations cars. The cars might look different But say always the same metal doing the job. That must be the battery material or the battery with the low CO2 footprint will be a recycled battery Yeah Extraordinary any other questions from the audience? Yes, one move. Please ask one more. So now as you said that there'll be unique code And you know that battery particularly each manufacturer also tracks his battery Your life cycle time will there be any time conflict between Tracking the unique code or there'll be no tracking of unique code Is there any global agency will be tracking where this battery is going because then there might be conflict that The company which is using it also tracking its own battery and the unique code which is a global code also being tracked Well, I would say if it if you have to have a consistent system where the information is correct It can go in all channels, but you can always trace it back And this is I think why it is important that we have one global system and not running four or five system because otherwise There will be information lost then the material will disappear and you don't know where it came from So that is why I think the global standardization is very important And then certainly a material travel you might have a car assembled in one region It goes to another region and the end of life is another region. So if we don't close that loop I think we lose the information. So it must be the goal And may I just ask a follow-up of Inga? Can you describe just very briefly where the actual data is being held and how that's being organized and And how transparent that's going to be is it going to be open source is going to be on the blockchain Where is all this data because it's huge volumes that we can see is on the way Where is it going to be held stored and and how is it going to be accessed? Thank you easy question These rules are in fact still being written So one of the principles that we tried to implement for the proof of concept is to really enable interoperability of different it solutions Because we believe that the market will select their own instruments and there will be much competition With different systems different it solutions. So the gba doesn't see itself very much in prescribing this But we would like to excuse me Really orchestrate this ecosystem that the different solutions can a talk to each other issue comparable information and Consistently report against the same rules so that we can benchmark it. Okay. Yeah more work ahead clearly Still to be done. We have one more question in the back Thank you. Could you just talk a little bit more about the pilot with the pilots with tesla and audis with that entails? yeah I passed that question to Inga. She's been intricately involved in in those pilots But clearly tesla and fox wagon group. I think they're by far the largest Electric vehicle manufacturer sort of have them in the pilots I think it's a testimony of of the relevance of the gba and as as the industry is galvanizing around these standards So please Inga Yeah, we basically had these companies involved alongside non-governmental members international organizations governments to first Define the rules against which they need to be assessed In terms of the pilot participation, this was open to all of our members It was opt-in who wanted to be the first to disclose data that hasn't yet been asked for so it's it's a brave step Which is why it's also important to note that the data in the battery passport is realistic data It doesn't serve yet for comparison. We've selectively Withheld parameters so that it cannot be prematurely compared, but we show the principles And we've worked with these companies to mobilize their value chain Composed of gba members so that we can create that trusted interplay Between the different actors to start sharing information without getting locked down in 10 years of nda negotiations And really create that trust in the system. And that's how We mobilized the cell makers because the gba combines really the entire value chain and is is quite unique in that respect Support showing up yet. Yes. So if you leave the room, there is a barcode displayed at the door You can scan it with your mobile phone and access the data Well, clearly we have more questions and answers than we have time for today. We are unfortunately out of time Congratulations on the launch of the battery passport into the global battery alliance and all its partners Thank you very much for Ellen MacArthur for sharing with us Her view that this is really the fruition So the the manifestation of the circular economy One step at a time, and thank you to all those in the room and our panelists. Thank you very much