Workstream Bodies
Cross-Cutting Task Forces
The Task Forces on cross-cutting issues will facilitate the collaboration between the working groups’ members in non-technical thematic areas that are transversal to the entire value chain. The aim of the Task Forces is to discuss the main challenges in these areas and provide recommendations and support to the workstream of the Working Groups, taking into account their specific challenges and needs.
The established Task Forces in the domains of digitalisation, education and skills, safety, and sustainability will be further engaged and supported, comprising permanent structures of Batteries Europe. Two additional Task Forces will focus on the topics of “social science and humanities” and “standardisation and hybridisation” to address the increasing need for public engagement and hybridization of battery solutions with other technologies.
The flexible structure of these Task Forces will allow for repurposing their scope based on the needs of the batteries’ ecosystem. Similarly, to the Working Groups, all Task Forces will operate in coordination and synchronicity with the European Partnership BATT4EU, to avoid overlaps and create synergies among different stakeholders.
The Batteries Europe Task Force on Digitalisation aims to identify challenges and opportunities related to digital technologies for the battery value chain. It focuses on topics from discovery to end of life, assessing and evaluating the state-of-the-art of the currently available digital technologies and the benefits their further development can bring.
This Task Force focuses on the needs of the battery value chain in terms of education and skills for its workforce, looking at core technical knowledge and skills needed for manufacturing. Its focus is on the analysis of the present situation and a set of recommended actions needed to make Europe ready for competitiveness in 2030.
The intention of this Task Force is to identify safety-related aspects across the entire battery value chain, work on the identification of potential hazards and failure modes, and work on prevention and mitigation of risks. The Task Force contemplates challenges like future battery technologies, automatization and the use of robotics in the processes, digitalization, sustainability actions and education needs.
The Batteries Europe Task-Force on Sustainability aims at defining the key sustainability aspects that need to be taken into account across the whole battery value chain, defining the main sustainability requirements in terms of Economic sustainability (lack of raw materials, EU independence, regulatory aspects, etc), social sustainability (workers’ rights, jobs, social life cycle assessment, etc) and Environmental sustainability (use of hazardous materials, recycling, life cycle assessment, etc).
The aim of this Task Force is to use methods from the Social Sciences and Humanities research domains to understand and to communicate the social reality complexities associated with batteries and promote the STEM disciplines. It will cover the processes across an entire batteries’ supply chain and will put a strong focus on the battery use part, exploring enablers and obstacles of social acceptance among different groups of users, and reaching out to civil society and citizens through open consultations.
This Task Force will facilitate knowledge exchange activities (e.g. meetings, workshops etc.) between Batteries Europe and the ecosystem of experts and research infrastructure for energy storage technologies developed in the StoRIES project.
The aim of the Task Force on Innovation Uptake is to secure an easy access to outcomes of Horizon Europe and Horizon2020 Projects and to provide a path for successful results to reach industrial or financial players interested in maturing these results up to the market.