Personal electronics

Batteries

By 2030, more than half of the cars sold in Europe will be electric cars. Meanwhile, an increasing share of electricity is produced through renewable sources, and batteries are needed to buffer the demand. Large-scale production of batteries is very energy- and resource-intensive. With demand expected to skyrocket in the coming years, adopting a set of sustainability requirements is urgent.

Batteries contain valuable raw materials such as Cobalt, Lithium, and Nickel. Through their production processes, batteries have an important environmental impact, with high levels of CO2 emissions and water contamination.

The production of batteries is very energy-intensive, and an estimated 70 to 110kg of CO2-eq is emitted when manufacturing 1kWh of battery. Small electric cars have batteries of 41kWh, which means that several tonnes of CO2 are emitted by each electric vehicle battery put on the market.
Batteries have different capacity and resource efficiency issues. Electric car batteries, for example, decrease over time and may not be usable anymore in cars but may serve to store energy in buildings. In the case of smaller batteries, it may happen that batteries life-expectation outrun that of the products they were made for. These batteries need to be easily reusable, both in their original application and in other applications, to maximise each battery’s use.

Materials present in batteries (such as Lithium) are neither infinite nor efficiently recycled, therefore we need to pay particular attention to the economic and environmental issues that may come from this situation. No matter how durable a battery might be, we cannot allow a device’s lifetime to depend on its battery. Devices that outlast their battery’s durability must not automatically become e-waste, and that’s why it’s important to ensure that all batteries may be easily replaceable by every user – preventing e-waste.

WHAT’S THE EUROPEAN UNION DOING?

In 2019, the European Commission published a Strategic Action Plan on Batteries, which also introduced an analysis of sustainability requirements for batteries. Following the Strategic Action Plan on batteries, which aimed at introducing sustainability requirements for batteries, the European Union revised the Batteries Directive and turned it into a Regulation in June 2023. These new regulations focus on the replaceability of batteries and the reuse of critical raw materials, especially cobalt, lithium and nickel.

The new regulations will fully enter into force by 2027.

WHAT DOES THE COOLPRODUCTS CAMPAIGN WANT?

Develop more appropriate durability requirements for batteries (e.g. minimum number of charging cycles).
Introduce design requirements facilitating second-life applications, by giving easier access to state-of- health data for example, and design requirements easing repair, and ultimately dismantling and recycling.
Close loopholes that currently allow excessive exemptions to the Batteries Regulation. More specifically, we hope to see replaceable batteries as a requirement for appliances designed to operate in a wet environment, as it’s been proven that these do not represent a real risk for the end users.
Proper implementation of the regulation at a national level.
Instructions for battery replacement are in every user manual.
Ban anti-replacement practices, allowing batteries to be replaced with any compatible battery, even non-OEM ones.