Three related but distinct initiatives in the battery/product-passport space, easily conflated:
Global Battery Alliance (GBA)
Incubated by the World Economic Forum from 2017, incorporated as an independent Belgian non-profit in 2022 — the same “WEF-incubated-then-independent-Belgian-non-profit” path Gaia-X’s AISBL structure also follows. Members span the value chain (Audi, BASF, CATL, Glencore, LG Energy Solution, Umicore, Tesla, Volkswagen, plus NGOs and international bodies). Its voluntary Battery Passport is built on Digital Product Passport protocols and sits ahead of the EU Battery Regulation (2023/1542), which makes battery passports legally mandatory from February 2027 — giving GBA’s voluntary standard a strong chance of becoming the de facto compliance template once the mandate takes effect.
Battery Pass (distinct project)
A German-government-funded (BMWK grant BZF335, “by resolution of the German Bundestag”) 3-year R&D consortium: acatech, Audi, BASF, BMW, FIWARE Foundation, Fraunhofer IPK, Systemiq (a named co-author of SINE’s own 2022 Data Commons whitepaper — see Systemiq), TWAICE, Umicore, VDE Renewables. Functions as a technical R&D feeder that aligns with GBA’s global Passport standard rather than as an independent competing standard.
CIRPASS-2 (separate, not GBA-affiliated)
An EU Digital Europe Programme-funded project, €12.5 million, May 2024–April 2027, 49 partners led by CEA-List (France), covering textiles/electronics/tyres/construction (explicitly not batteries) with 13 “lighthouse” pilots.
Strategic relevance to SINE
Demonstrates a repeating funding pattern across this whole sector: a bounded R&D consortium (€8–13M range, Horizon Europe/Digital Europe/BMWK grants) builds a technical reference architecture, then a separate, longer-lived nonprofit (here, GBA) operationalizes it at scale by riding a large convening brand (WEF) plus a hard regulatory deadline. Also notable: Systemiq’s direct overlap between SINE’s own whitepaper authorship and the Battery Pass consortium is a concrete, existing relationship SINE could potentially leverage rather than treat GBA/Battery Pass purely as competitors.
Cross-references
- Digital Product Passport — Battery Passport is built on DPP protocols
- Pathfinder Network — parallel carbon-data exchange effort in the same landscape
- Systemiq — Battery Pass consortium member, also a SINE whitepaper co-author
- Gaia-X — shares GBA’s WEF-incubated-then-independent-Belgian-non-profit path
Sources
sources/research/2026-08-05-competitor-data-exchange-standards.md
(GBA/Battery Pass/CIRPASS-2 section; live web research, 2026-08-05).