CATL has taken part in a third straight Global Battery Alliance Battery Passport pilot, making it the only battery company with passports published in every wave so far.
Battery makers rarely make headlines for paperwork. However, CATL is betting that verified sustainability data will soon matter as much as range figures. The Chinese giant has joined the Global Battery Alliance (GBA) Battery Passport pilot for a third consecutive wave.
That makes CATL the only battery company to have passports published across all of the GBA’s pilot waves. The GBA announced the latest results as part of its 2026 pilot programme.
What a Battery Passport Actually Does
Think of it as a lifecycle record for a battery. The GBA programme aims to create a standard method to monitor, measure and verify a battery’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance.
In practical terms, it gives the industry a common format for sustainability data. Without one, every company reports its own way, and comparing claims becomes guesswork. A shared framework should make those claims easier to check and harder to dress up.
A Bigger Field This Time
The 2026 pilot was not a niche exercise. Its participants included cell manufacturers that together represent nearly 80% of global production capacity.
Within that group, CATL says its battery product performed strongly throughout the assessment. Its main claim is full ESG data coverage across the entire value chain. That runs from mining and refining through materials, cells and finished battery packs.
Note that this description of its performance comes from CATL itself. Still, the upstream end of that chain is where data is usually hardest to collect. So complete coverage from the mine onwards would be a meaningful result.
From Proof of Concept to Certification
CATL’s involvement goes back to January 2023, when the GBA published the world’s first Battery Passport proof of concept. In the second wave, it applied for separate passports for two products: its Shenxing battery and its CTP battery.
It was also one of the first companies to publicly release pilot results validated by an independent third party. In a story built on transparency, outside checking counts for more than self-assessment.
The next step is a bigger one. GBA Executive Director Inga Petersen said the alliance plans to make its full certification scheme available in early 2027. She described this as a shift from trials to full-scale implementation.
The Carbon Neutrality Claims
CATL also restated its wider climate targets. It describes itself as the only battery company with TWh-scale shipments to reach carbon neutrality across its core operations. It says it hit that 2025 milestone on schedule.
The longer goal is full value-chain carbon neutrality by 2035. That target is much harder, because it covers suppliers and raw materials beyond CATL’s own factories.
Why It Matters
For us enthusiasts, battery chemistry and charging speeds usually steal the attention. Yet supply-chain transparency is becoming a real point of competition. Petersen suggested that verified sustainability performance could become a meaningful differentiator in global battery markets.
Being in from the start gives CATL a head start on that system. Once certification arrives in 2027, its competitors will be measured against a standard it has spent four years helping to build.
