You have over 15 years experience in the sustainability world. What is it that drew you to the Global Battery Alliance?
My background is in international affairs. I did a master’s in International Affairs, and was working specifically on natural resource management and natural resource governance, spending a fair bit of time in Africa on mining sector governance and institutional capacity building and legal and regulatory reform. What became apparent is that some of the challenges that you face in terms of making mining and the green energy transition more equitable and distributing both costs and benefits of the green transition is that we really require multi-stakeholder collaboration and collective action across the value chains. And both of these boxes are ticked by the Global Battery Alliance.
Let’s look at some of the key sustainability initiatives of the Global Battery Alliance. What are you currently focusing on and what do you think will impact the battery value chains the most by 2030?
The Global Battery Alliance is a multi-stakeholder partnership of mining companies, cell manufacturers, automotive OEMs, recyclers, NGOs, public sector, academia, all of whom are dedicated to scaling a sustainable, circular, responsible battery value chain by 2030. In order for us to achieve that, one of the first things that we need is transparency about the impacts and risks that are associated with this growing industry. The battery industry is set to grow seventeen fold by 2030, so you have inevitable impacts that need to be managed.
The Global Battery Alliance has been working on promoting sustainable growth of this industry as a key driver for achieving Paris Agreement targets. And one of the instruments that we have put forward and that we are still working on is the battery passport, a digital product passport for batteries. We’re also working on public-private collaboration, the Critical Minerals Initiative, to have more dialogue and cooperation between the public sector and the private sector in addressing these challenges.
You’ve just mentioned the battery passport. Can you go into that a little bit more? How does it work and what benefits does it bring?
So, the battery passport is a digital product passport for batteries that combines different sets of data. The first one is traceability information about the raw materials that are in the product, in the battery. Then you also have technical data around the battery product itself and usage data like battery’s state of health. But critically, and this has been the focus of the Global Battery Alliance, you have key performance indicators on sustainability performance, so that includes, for example, the battery carbon footprint, human rights, child labor, forest labor due diligence that companies have implemented throughout the value chain for this product.
What the Global Battery Alliance wants to do is to ultimately issue a sustainability certification for battery products to inform purchasing decisions, but also, more importantly, to inform procurement and investment decisions so you can ensure that the products that you are sourcing have been sustainably sourced and manufactured so that we contribute to creating a marketplace for more sustainable battery products.
This concept of the battery passport has been picked up in EU battery regulations and will become a mandatory requirement as of 2027 in the EU, any changes notwithstanding that are currently happening. But the GBA goes a little bit beyond that to really have this global comparability of sustainability performance of these products regardless of where they were manufactured, so that you can really contribute to continuous improvement and have these products compete, also on sustainability metrics, and not just cost alone.
You mentioned the many changes that are continuously happening in this space. Is that one of the main challenges you face in promoting sustainable battery value chains?
The policy and regulatory landscape is a challenge, and that’s not just EU specific but globally as you see changes in administrations and changes of direction generally for the EV sector. Then specifically for the battery industry, which is highly geographically concentrated, battery regulation has been a key driver for companies and manufacturers to align their practices with more responsible sourcing requirements and production requirements and starting data collection on battery carbon footprint. If there’s a pushback against ESG requirements, that obviously creates uncertainty. Is it a nice to have, or is it a must-have, and that does change the incentive structure for companies?
Additionally, we don’t yet have a price premium for more sustainably produced products, so how can we contribute to creating this marketplace that manufacturers also get rewarded for doing more? I think another challenge is that the voices of some of the producing countries are still missing in that conversation. So, when we’re talking about a sustainable product, what does it actually entail? And the perspectives might be different for an EV market or a big economy versus a producing country in the global south. Where do they place the emphasis?
Looking more broadly, what technological innovations in battery production are you most excited for?
I’m not a battery chemist, but I can say that batteries as a product are one of the most dynamic industries that you can imagine. The growth and the acceleration of the industry that we’ve seen is unprecedented since the Industrial Revolution. Even in the last 10 years, we’ve seen massive drops in costs and affordability and the economies of scale and domino effects of this market penetration as a product. What I find really exciting right now is that batteries as a product are very underutilized in terms of their potential functions. So, if you have a battery in an EV, yes, it can get you to A to B, but if you have vehicle to grid integration, vehicle to home integration, it can become decentralized mobile energy storage that has a lot of fringe benefits, and we haven’t really tapped into that at scale yet.
Do you see it on the near or distant horizon?
It depends on where you’re talking about. Obviously, you need other enabling factors like renewable energy grid infrastructure that allows this charging infrastructure, but we do see certain pockets of progress where this is happening, and I think this is certainly one of the things I’m watching out for.
We’re here at Mining Indaba. Can you tell us what you’re most looking forward to at this year’s event?
I’m most excited about the conversations around how Africa can benefit from this opportunity, for this growth opportunity, and specifically, the different types of partnerships that you need. Because one of the things that has become apparent, and I think painfully so to some countries in the global north, is that you cannot build a battery industry on an end-to-end value chain overnight. You really need regional approaches. You need the right incentive structures and policy environment. So, in Africa, what is required to create some of the enabling conditions to put Africa on the map and to really seize the opportunity and benefit from it, not just as an export of raw materials, but also to transition from an extractive industry to manufacturing economies.
