Joint statement for an accelerated action plan to support the growth of the European battery industry

On March 23 was held in Brussels the European Battery Alliance (EBA) High-Level Industrial Meeting organised and hosted by EBA250-EIT InnoEnergy. This meeting brought together key stakeholders along a battery value chain to take stock of the achievements of the EBA since its launch five years ago.

The high-level representatives of the EBA confirmed their commitment to build a resilient, sustainable and competitive battery value chain in Europe and the need for an accelerated action plan to fill in remaining gaps until 2030. In light of this meeting and together with them, EBA250 has written a joint statement underlining the priority actions to implement in order to support the continuous growth of the EU battery value chain.

Both the Covid pandemic and war in Ukraine have indeed highlighted the fundamental need for resilient industrial value chains, including batteries, for the EU’s economic growth and decarbonisation, as well as for its strategic autonomy.  Despite significant progress achieved in building the sustainable and vertically-integrated battery value chain in the EU – as reaffirmed during the sixth EBA Ministerial meeting on 23 February 2022, there are still gaps to fill in to ensure the deployment of a resilient end-to-end battery industry. These concern in particular:

• The upstream segment: mining of domestic raw materials, processing and refining, and production of active battery grade materials,
• The downstream segment: recycling of EOL (End Of Life) or scrap from production facilities, for an introduction of high-quality recycled metals back in the EU supply chain,
• The skills needed, both for white- and blue-collar workers, for designing and operating the numerous industrial projects mentioned above.

Several priority actions have been identified to support the continuous growth of the EU battery value chain, including a rapid adoption and implementation of the EU battery regulation, a swift adoption of relevant legislative provisions in the “fit-for-55” package, the implementation of an upgraded toolbox to support and de-risk investments in raw and processed battery materials.

In addition, being ahead of the plan that we set ourselves in 2017 for 2025 (€250 billion of new annual GDP, and 400 GWh of cell manufacturing capacity committed), we consider it necessary to update the 2018 European Strategic Action Plan on Batteries. We therefore request the collaboration of the European Commission to update the strategic action plan with a view to achieve equally ambitious objectives for 2030.

For more detailed information, read the joint statement here.