News & events

On 9-10 November 2022, partners of Batteries Europe attended the 16th SET Plan conference: Towards a new strategic energy technology plan In Prague, Czech Republic.

On day 2, Batteries Europe Chair Michael Lippert, as well as partners Dr. Stefan Wolf (VDI/VDE Innovation) and Thilo Bein (Fraunhofer LBF) took part in an insightful panel session “Towards a sustainable European battery industry”.

Indeed, batteries are and will be playing a crucial role in the transition towards a low-carbon energy and mobility systems. This requires the deployment of hundreds of GWh of batteries in Europe per year; however, it is not only about one technology and one solution. Europe currently strongly depends on third countries for sourcing and refining of required raw materials, as well as for battery production equipment. Struggling with many limits, which were slowing down the fast development of the whole RES industry, there has been a lot of focus on overcoming those limits, extending the capacity, decreasing the size, and using less scarce and broadly available materials. Yet, there is still a way to go in developing batteries as a part of a decentralised system these days, mainly in the sector of buildings and industry.

The development of a sustainable European battery industry is therefore of utmost importance, which is supported by two waves of Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI). The cell production capacity in Europe is growing steadily, also supported by the strong position of European players in electric vehicles and storage systems. The future Batteries Regulation can help Europe becoming a world leader in sustainable batteries, by supporting circularity and addressing other aspects over the whole supply chain. The session aimed at giving a holistic vision on where we should go from here.

Speakers:
• Pavel Podruh, Innovation Manager of Czech Association for Energy Storage AKU-BAT CZ & Co-Founder of Amvolt.energy
• Stefan Wolf, Senior consultant for innovation at VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH
• Simon Perraud, Deputy director at CEA-Liten
• Michael Lippert, Chairman of the Board, Batteries Europe and BEPA
• Thilo Bein, Technical Advisor BEPA/Batteries Europe WG 5 Application and Integration: Mobile
• Matthias Bruchhausen (moderator), Team and Project Leader, Hydrogen and Batteries Unit at JRC, European Commission