Patrick Zank, Senior Battery Consultant, VDE Renewables GmbH and Battery Pass Consortium member
Batteries are an integral part of our daily lives, powering electric vehicles, energy storage systems, and portable devices. Yet, their environmental and social impacts often remain hidden. This is about to change with the EU-wide mandatory digital battery passport, set to become effective in February 2027.
The battery passport will provide a comprehensive digital record of a battery’s lifecycle, including its origin, composition, performance, and environmental footprint. It will therefore bring data about a battery into one place that was previously scattered across an organisation and hard to both administer and access. To help businesses meet these requirements, a significant milestone has now been reached: the publication of the DIN DKE SPEC 99100 “Requirements for Data Attributes of the Battery Passport.”
From Guidance to Standard: Developing DIN DKE SPEC 99100:2025-02
The development of the DIN DKE SPEC 99100 exemplifies close collaboration between industry, academia, and regulatory bodies. Its foundation lies in the Battery Pass Consortium’s ‘Content Guidance for the EU Battery Passport’ (last updated in December 2023), which structured the requirements of the EU Battery Regulation and provided the first professional framework for its implementation.
Building on this Guidance, an expert panel defined specific data fields and technical specifications for the digital battery passport. This iterative process was coordinated by members of the Battery Pass consortium and the German Institute for Standardization (DIN) and the German Commission for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (DKE), and followed the standardised process for technical rules (DIN/DKE SPEC) by DIN and DKE.
What makes this process unique is its open and collaborative format, incorporating industry feedback and scientific expertise. Companies, industry associations, academia, and technical testing laboratories worked together to ensure the requirements were not only technically feasible but also practical for implementation.
What Does the DIN DKE SPEC 99100 cover?
The DIN DKE SPEC 99100 defines data attributes to be included in the digital battery passport based on both requirements by the EU Battery Regulation as well as voluntary additions, to ensure transparency across the entire battery lifecycle. It focuses on several key areas:
- Technical specifications: Capacity, charge cycles, performance, and lifespan.
- Sustainability metrics: Carbon footprint along the supply chain, based on standardised calculation methods.
- Materials and resources: Data on material composition, particularly critical raw materials like lithium and cobalt.
- Social responsibility: Documentation of working conditions in raw material extraction and compliance with environmental and human rights standards.
- Recycling and reuse: Data on recyclability and traceability of components.
By building on the previous in-depth work of the Battery Pass consortium and multi-stakeholder expert consultation enabled by the DIN/DKE SPEC process, the standard provides the most advanced insight and guidance to date for how to implement the EU requirements.
Beyond Europe: Laying the Groundwork for International Standards
While the DIN DKE SPEC 99100 primarily addresses EU-specific requirements, it is designed to align with and inform further international standardisation on this topic, providing precise descriptions of methodologies and data attribute definitions, to help bridge gaps between regional regulatory frameworks and international standardisation initiatives such as ISO/IEC and UNECE activities. This approach supports increasing coherence across different levels of standardisation, preventing duplication and fostering global interoperability.
A Tool for Compliance and Innovation
The DIN DKE SPEC 99100 equips companies with a future-oriented framework that not only helps them comply with the EU Battery Regulation, but also opens up new business opportunities. It is therefore not only a tool for the present but also an investment in the future of the battery industry – where technology innovation, data availability, and sustainability converge to enable a circular, competitive and environmentally friendly battery ecosystem.
