Germany joins alliance for sustainable battery value chains

Germany is set to join the Global Battery Alliance, chancellor Olaf Scholz announced at the Hamburg Sustainability Conference. Highlighting the critical role of batteries in the energy transition, he emphasised the necessity for environmentally sustainable production of batteries, including the extraction of necessary raw materials like lithium. “We must work together to ensure that the local citizens involved or affected benefit from this,” he said.

The Global Battery Alliance (GBA), a public-private collaboration platform founded in 2017 at the World Economic Forum, works to minimise environmental impact, protect human rights, and create benefits for all stakeholders, for example through developing global sustainability standards. It currently has more than 180 partners, including industry players from across the world, academics, and intergovernmental organizations. Germany is one of the first countries to join forces with the alliance, together with Zambia and Serbia.

“Having Germany — one of the major G20 countries — as a partner shows a vote of confidence in what the GBA is doing, and the financial commitments will also help advance our work,” the executive director of the alliance, Inga Peterson, told Clean Energy Wire.

Growing demand for batteries has led to increasing concerns about their environmental and human costs. Production is energy-intensive and involves a great variety of raw materials that can cause significant environmental and social damages when mined. This is why entire production chains require close monitoring and management.