Zhongxin Jingwei, December 20 Topic: The new regulations of power batteries are difficult to solve the "right medicine", and the industry threshold will be raised.
The author is Chao Zhou, a researcher at Anbound.
Since 2013, China's new energy vehicles (mainly electric vehicles) have entered a stage of rapid development, and it will be exactly 10 years until 2023. The large-scale service of new energy electric vehicles also means a potential wave of large-scale retirement, and the most critical part of this lies in the **, utilization and treatment of power batteries. Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Administrative Measures for the Comprehensive Utilization of Power Batteries for New Energy Vehicles (Draft for Comments)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Draft").
The most noteworthy points of the Draft are: First, continue to highlight environmental protection. The "Draft Opinions" clearly points out that battery manufacturers are encouraged to give priority to the use of recycled raw materials and disclose the proportion of recycled raw materials used in power batteries. This regulation undoubtedly further improves the relevant environmental protection suggestions, which is conducive to the further environmental protection of the power battery itself, and promotes the environmental protection of the future power battery retirement treatment. Second, the extended producer responsibility system is more nuanced. The Draft Opinion inherits the principle of extended producer responsibility in the 2018 Interim Measures for the Administration of the Utilization of Power Batteries for New Energy Vehicles and further refines them. The "Draft Opinions" clearly stipulates the level and establishment method of the first service outlets, and requires the active disclosure of their own contact information and strengthens dynamic management, which objectively facilitates the communication between the first enterprise and the processing enterprise, and helps to reduce the cost of information. Thirdly, the detailed rules of the cascade utilization regulations are more detailed. The Draft Opinion provides detailed provisions on key aspects such as the technical process and product requirements for cascade certification, covering all aspects from product testing to network settings, which helps to avoid the illegal "recirculation" of used batteries. Thirdly, the traceability requirements are more refined. The "Draft Opinions" has made corresponding clear traceability requirements for the whole chain of industries such as car companies, battery companies, battery leasing companies, and first-class utilization enterprises, which helps to track and update the information of waste batteries, and makes the circulation channels of waste batteries more standardized and orderly.
The introduction of the draft will undoubtedly help solve the problem of power batteries, but it also faces some challenges. First of all, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has so far announced five batches of "white list" enterprises, and the number of employees is steadily increasing, but in the face of the imminent "retirement tide", the processing capacity of enterprises is still doubtful. For example, the actual amount of batteries processed in 2022 is much lower than the actual capacity at the moment. With the retirement of more batteries, the limitation of processing capacity will hinder the effective use of waste batteries, and will also force some batteries to "flow into the black market". Second, due to the increasingly considerable scale of the industry, the simple impulse to pursue profits will continue to drive the "gray factory" or even the "black factory" with incomplete qualifications to persist in operation. Due to its own concealment, the continuous operation of the "gray factory" and the "black factory" will continue to interfere with the order and stability of the battery industry, resulting in corresponding waste of resources and even environmental problems. Therefore, as far as the national competent authorities are concerned, it is necessary to continue to promote the orderly expansion of "whitelist" enterprises and the stable improvement of the processing capacity and efficiency of existing "whitelist" enterprises under the premise of adhering to high standards and strict access to the industry. In addition, after the issuance of the Draft Opinions, the most critical link is implementation, and the relevant departments should further strengthen supervision to promote the full implementation of relevant provisions, and at the same time strengthen the dynamic tracking and crackdown on illegal operators to ensure the standardized and orderly operation of the entire industry.
Objectively speaking, the "Draft Opinions" has made targeted provisions for the chaos in the waste power battery industry in the past few years, which can be described as "prescribing the right medicine". Therefore, once the new regulations are implemented, they will have the following impacts. First of all, the threshold of the industry has been substantially raised, and the operation of the industry has become more standardized. Whether it is the further refinement of the principle of extension of producer responsibility or the deepening of the whole chain of traceability mechanism, it has actually improved the entry threshold of the waste power battery utilization industry. The strengthening of the traceability mechanism also means that it is difficult for relevant practitioners to freely decide the whereabouts of waste batteries simply according to the logic of "the highest price gets". Secondly, after the implementation of the new regulations, with the strengthening of circulation channels and the standardization of industry operations, the potential of China's waste battery utilization industry can be further tapped, and the utilization rate of waste batteries can also be further improved. This will help further improve the environmental protection and resource utilization of China's new energy vehicle industry. (Zhongxin Jingwei app).
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