SSI and GBA, both industry-led standards bodies, met on the margins of New York Climate Week on 22 September to formalise an agreement that was months in the making, and part of a broader push by both towards forging links with adjacent organisations. It's the second such partnership this year for SSI, following an April memorandum with the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance that covers the mining end of the solar supply chain. This latest collaboration goes a step further, covering the batteries now frequently paired on site with solar.
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The agreement spells out shared guidance and learning resources, joint webinars and workshops, exchanges between their working groups, and pilot projects on responsible sourcing, traceability and sustainability reporting. The broader aim is to stop solar and storage developing separate rulebooks for traceability and sustainability assurance, and to bring respective standards closer together.
Why the timing matters
Solar and battery storage supply chains are becoming harder to treat separately as the two are increasingly combined within individual projects. SSI and GBA say the partnership is meant to reduce duplicated effort for companies operating across both, and to let each organisation build on the other's existing work as opposed to developing parallel standards. “The energy transition increasingly depends on interconnected solar and energy storage value chains,” said Rachel Owens, chief executive of the Solar Stewardship Initiative. “By partnering with the Global Battery Alliance, we are creating opportunities to share expertise, strengthen trust in responsible sourcing approaches, and support greater transparency across critical renewable energy technologies.”
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Inga Petersen, executive director of the Global Battery Alliance, pointed to the GBA's Battery Passport as a starting point. “The GBA brings practical experience in developing globally interoperable approaches to traceability, sustainability reporting and assurance through the Battery Passport,” she said. “By working with SSI, we can build on each other's work, reduce duplication for companies operating across interconnected value chains, and strengthen credible sustainability performance across the clean energy transition.” (TF)
