Battery Regulation

(27) The expected massive deployment of batteries in sectors like mobility and energy storage should reduce carbon emissions. However, to maximise that potential, it is necessary that their overall life cycle have a low carbon footprint. According to the Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules for High Specific Energy Rechargeable Batteries for Mobile Applications, climate change is the second highest related impact category for batteries after the mining and use of minerals and metals. Rechargeable industrial batteries with a capacity greater than 2 kWh, LMT batteries and electric vehicle batteries placed on the Union market should therefore be accompanied by a carbon footprint declaration. Harmonising the technical rules for calculating the carbon footprint for all rechargeable industrial batteries with a capacity greater than 2 kWh, LMT batteries and electric vehicle batteries placed on the Union market is a prerequisite for introducing a requirement for a carbon footprint declaration and subsequently for establishing carbon footprint performance classes that will enable batteries with lower overall carbon footprints to be identified. Information and clear labelling requirements on the carbon footprint of batteries is not expected in itself to lead to the behavioural change necessary to ensure that the Union’s objective to decarbonise the mobility and energy storage sectors is achieved, in line with the internationally agreed objectives on climate change. Therefore, maximum carbon thresholds should be introduced, further to a dedicated impact assessment to determine those values. In proposing the level of the maximum carbon footprint threshold, the Commission should, inter alia, take into account the relative distribution of the carbon footprint values in batteries on the market, the extent of progress in the reduction of carbon footprint of batteries placed on the Union market and the effective and potential contribution of this measure to the Union’s objectives on sustainable mobility and climate neutrality by 2050 at the latest. In order to bring about transparency on the batteries’ carbon footprint, and shift the Union market towards batteries with a lower carbon footprint, regardless of where they are produced, a gradual and cumulative increase in the carbon footprint requirements is justified. As a result of these requirements, the avoided carbon emissions in batteries’ life cycle, will contribute to the Union’s climate objectives, particularly that of reaching climate neutrality by 2050 at the latest. This could also contribute to other policies at Union and national level, such as by means of incentives or green public procurement criteria, fostering the production of batteries with lower environmental impacts.