EU Battery Regulations 2023: UK Readiness for Battery Passports and Smart Labelling - Report on a round table discussion and follow-up interviews

The EU has recently (June 2023) adopted a new regulation concerning batteries and waste batteries [1], which will place new information requirements and ICT (Information Communication Technologies) system requirements on those who place batteries and battery-enabled products “on the market” or “into service”. This includes any economic operator that makes batteries available on the EU market separately as cells, modules and packs or integrated within larger products, changes a battery’s intended application, or refurbishes or remanufactures them. The new regulations will require all batteries to be fitted with a QR Code, enabling Smart Label (SL) and Battery Passport (BP) features, depending on the type of battery.

During the last nine months (Dec 2022 – Aug 2023), this research project has sought to explore the readiness of UK Industry [2] to comply with the new EU regulations, in particular, to deliver the BP and SL technologies. This was done via a national survey, expert round table discussion, and follow-up interviews. This document reports on the round table commentary by nine expert participants in response to a summary presentation of the survey's initial findings.

The purpose of the round table discussion (and subsequent interviews) was to seek an “initial reaction” from the industry and experts from academia to identify if there was anything missed regarding survey questions and to highlight the findings considered most significant by those with expert domain knowledge. This document is not a verbatim transcript but rather a condensed summary of the debate, simplified where possible for ease of reading.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32023R1542

[2] https://drmelanieking.com/projects/battery-passport-uk-readiness/