Blockchain-enhanced transparency to support sustainability in battery production networks

This work explores the potential of permissioned blockchain technologies to increase transparency and support sustainable decision-making in battery production networks. The motivation arises from growing societal and regulatory demands on companies to prove the origin and environmental impacts of materials across globally dispersed value chains. The battery industry, in particular, faces the dual challenge of ramping up production to meet the accelerating demand for electric vehicles while minimizing the environmental footprint across all stages of the value chain. The reliable verification of product-specific indicators such as the product carbon footprint PCF and the share of recycled content, as required by the European Union’s Battery Regulation in the form of a digital battery passport, can only be partially achieved using conventional methods. These methods often rely on secondary data and do not ensure consistent comparability and traceability across multiple stages of production. A systematic literature review is conducted to analyze relevant studies at the intersection of blockchain technology, environmental assessment, digital product passports, and industrial production networks. The findings reveal that existing research remains fragmented, with most studies focused on isolated production steps and lacking a thorough examination of blockchain’s underlying mechanisms and its actual contribution to transparency and sustainability. In response, a conceptual framework is developed that defines the technical and methodological foundations for a blockchain-based transparency platform. The framework includes a layered system architecture that supports data acquisition, automated processing through smart contracts, and knowledge-based decision-making, while ensuring access control aligned with stakeholder requirements. A prototypical implementation based on the Hyperledger Fabric architecture demonstrates the feasibility of the concept. Key functionalities include the automatic creation and transfer of digital assets, standardized calculation of carbon footprints and recycled content shares, and differentiated access to information based on stakeholder roles. Three industry-related case studies illustrate the practical application of the platform. The results underscore the significant influence of material provenance on the carbon footprint of battery cells, greater than that of process innovations in cell manufacturing. The representation of decision impacts along the value chain opens up new approaches for the sustainable design of supplier relationships. The additional technical effort associated with the use of blockchain is negligible in relation to the overall environmental footprint of battery cell production. This work thus makes a substantial contribution to the development of digitally supported, sustainable industrial solutions in a strategically important technological domain. Future research can build on these findings to develop sustainable business models based on the platform. In addition, further use cases should be explored, for example, for the secure tracking of process steps in battery recycling, as well as applications beyond the battery industry for deploying blockchainbased transparency platforms. Alongside the ecological benefits, commercial advantages also warrant closer examination.