Standards and Regulations
Digital Product Passports and power electronics
By Patrick Le Fèvre, chief marketing and communication officer, POWERBOX (PRBX) T
wenty years ago, the adoption of the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive 2002/95/EC (RoHS 1) was one of the driving forces mandating the electronics industry to look for alternatives to replace the tin-lead eutectic alloy which had been used for decades for soldering purposes. Since then, many regulations have sprung up restricting the use of hazardous substances, and we are all used to RoHS, REACH, TSCA and others. Besides that, a growing concern about long term sustainability and optimization of natural resources has motivated governments, institutions and industry to consider how to develop a circular business model, including elements from the cradle-to-cradle concept, and to define an optimum way to trace a product from its origin, its content, its compliance to environmental regulations, its reparability or final disposal and recycling. This materialized in March 2022 by the European Commission as part of the EU Green Deal, and was followed by similar initiatives in the US. But what is it about?
Here comes the Digital Product Passport
After 10 years of local initiatives, as part of the European Green Deal the European Commission presented a package of proposals to make sustainable products the norm in the European Union, moving from conventional linear economy, boosting circular business models and empowering consumers for the green transition (Figure 01), including the so- called Digital Product Passport (DPP). At this point we could question what this has to do with power electronics and how the power supply community may be affected by this new requirement? Where is the threshold between a Point-of-Load, a multi kilowatts power supply or even an Electrical Vehicle? Which power electronics segment will have to comply with the DPP? Let’s try to better understand and debug what is DPP.
50 June 2023
Figure 01 - European Union moving from conventional linear economy to circular business model (PRBX/ petovarga/Shutterstock)
Having the whole life cycle in mind The proposal for a Regulation on Ecodesign for Sustainable Products addresses product design, which determines up to 80 per cent of a product’s lifecycle environmental impact. It sets new requirements to make products more durable, reliable, reusable, upgradable, reparable, easier to maintain, refurbish and recycle, and energy and resource efficient. In addition, product-specific information requirements will ensure that consumers are knowledgeable on the environmental impact of their purchases.
All regulated products will have Digital Product Passports making it easier to repair or recycle them and facilitate tracking substances of concern along the supply chain. The aim of the passport is to provide producers and other key supply chain actors, as well as consumers and market surveillance authorities, with relevant information for ensuring the sustainable management of products. If well designed, and if aligned with existing industry initiatives, these digital product passports
Components in Electronics
could help promote the circular economy and circular business models.
This may sound quite hypothetical and even complex but let’s consider a practical example with the booming energy storage segment and batteries.
The battery industry showing the way
Since 2006 batteries and waste batteries have been regulated within the EU under the Batteries Directive (2006/66/EC). Though driven by electric transport and energy storage the demand for batteries has increased rapidly and is set to increase 14-fold by 2030. Such global exponential growth in the demand for batteries will lead to an equivalent increase in demand for raw materials, hence the need to minimize their environmental impact.
With high levels of concern for the long- term sustainability of the battery industry, in 2017 two major initiatives took place in Europe and the USA. Both were similarly aimed: to develop an innovative, competitive
and sustainable battery value chain in Europe and the USA with high regards for the environment and society. In Europe on October 11, 2017, the European Commission hosted auto, chemical and engineering executives in Brussels to strengthen battery manufacturing in the EU and to develop a European ecosystem to reduce dependency and risk in the supply chain of what will become the heart of energy transition and mass electrification. This was followed by the launch of the European Battery Alliance (EBA) as part of Europe’s clean and digital transition and a key enabling technology, and essential to the automotive sector’s competitiveness. In the USA in the same year a public- private collaboration platform was founded at the World Economic Forum to help establish a sustainable battery value chain by 2030, The Global Battery Alliance (GBA). We could say that 2017 has been the EU/ USA cornerstone for the battery industry setting the basic principles of what will
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