Recycled Content in Batteries: How the JRC Would Calculate and Verify Article 8 of the Batteries Regulation

A 2026 study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) tackles what will become one of the biggest compliance challenges for the battery industry in the coming years: how can the share of recycled cobalt, lithium, nickel and lead built into a battery be credibly calculated and verified? Article 8 of the Batteries Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 mandates documentation from 2028 and concrete minimum targets from 2031 — but the detailed methodology will be set out in a not-yet-adopted delegated act. The JRC’s 110-page report provides the techno-scientific basis for that legislation, and its central lesson is striking: there is no measurement technique that can directly detect recycled metal content in a finished battery, so the entire system rests on traceability and documentation.

What the JRC Study Is, and Why It Matters

The report was prepared by the JRC (authors: Pierri, Orefice, García-Gutiérrez, Bobba, Gaudillat, Mathieux and Huygens) at the request of the Directorate-General for Environment (DG ENV) and the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW). The document is not legislation, and it deliberately refrains from recommending a single “winning” solution. Instead, drawing on a systematic literature review, two stakeholder workshops (November 2024 and April 2025) and numerous bilateral industry meetings, it maps the possible traceability models and, for each, sets out the advantages, disadvantages and the underlying calculation and verification logic.

The study’s purpose is to give the Commission a technically robust foundation for the delegated act under Article 8, which the report expects to be adopted around August 2026. The stakes of the methodology are enormous: it determines what administrative system a manufacturer must build, how it can compete with non-EU players, and how credible “recycled content” claims will be towards consumers.

The Legal Framework: Article 8 of the Batteries Regulation

Article 8 applies to industrial batteries with a capacity greater than 2 kWh (except those with exclusively external storage), electric-vehicle (EV) batteries and SLI (starting, lighting, ignition) batteries, where the active material contains cobalt, lead, lithium or nickel. For light means of transport (LMT) batteries, the documentation obligation applies later, from 2033.

The logic of the system hides an important detail: for Co, Li and Ni the accounting unit is the active material, whereas for lead it is the entire battery. The waste source also differs: cobalt, lithium and nickel may originate from battery manufacturing waste or post-consumer waste, while lead may come from waste more generally. Manufacturing by-products reused within the same process (e.g. manufacturing scrap) do not qualify as waste and therefore cannot be counted towards recycled content.

The key dates and targets:

Conformity assessment follows Article 17 of the Regulation (Modules D1 and G), with the involvement of notified bodies. As part of the technical documentation, the manufacturer must submit a study containing the calculations performed under the delegated act’s methodology, together with the evidence and information determining the input data for those calculations.

The Core Problem: Recycled Metal Content Cannot Be Measured Directly

One of the study’s most important — and technically hardest — findings is that no reliable, accurate and reproducible analytical method exists to distinguish recycled from primary (virgin) metal in a finished product. A nickel atom is chemically identical whether it comes from a mine or from a spent battery.

It follows that the entire compliance system is based not on measurement, but exclusively on documentation and the traceability of the chain of custody. Recycled content must be traceable from the moment waste enters a recycling plant all the way to the moment the derived material is built into a battery placed on the market. The minimum principle for data sharing is “one step up, one step down”: each actor keeps traceability data in its own system and shares the defined data with its immediate downstream and upstream partner.

The study also stresses that the four metals have value chains of differing difficulty. Lithium and lead recycling is typically closed-loop — these are essentially recovered from batteries, driven by legislative requirements, technical feasibility and economic viability (for lithium, Article 71 of the Batteries Regulation itself contributed to this in the EU). By contrast, nickel and cobalt are recovered from several waste streams and are needed by many other industries as well, making their value chains considerably more complex.

Chain of Custody Models

Drawing on the ISO 22095 standard, the study reviews the main chain of custody models and evaluates each in terms of flexibility and traceability. The models sit along the following spectrum:

• Identity preservation: the material originates from a single source and remains physically segregated throughout. The strictest model, offering full traceability, but practically unworkable, because many battery-industry processes rely on blending by their very nature.
• Segregation: certified material is kept separate from non-certified material, but certified materials of identical characteristics from different sources may be mixed. Mixing with virgin material is not allowed.
• Controlled blending: primary and recycled material may be blended in a known, recorded proportion.
• Mass balance: the most common and most flexible approach. Its essence is that, within a given accounting period, the volume of certified output does not exceed the volume of certified input. It can be applied at three levels: batch, plant and group.
• Book and claim: the administrative accounting is entirely decoupled from the physical material flow. The JRC discarded this option because it carries a fraud risk and goes beyond the scope of Article 8.

The mass balance model is often paired with volume reconciliation — the principle that recycled content generated at a plant over a period can be re-distributed among output products afterwards — and with credit allocation, which allows recycled content to be assigned to specific output fractions in a targeted way.

The Three Main Traceability Options

The JRC considered three main approaches worth taking forward for DG ENV and DG GROW:

1. Option 1 – Mass balance (with rolling average) only for the battery manufacturer: upstream actors (recycler, metal refiner, active-material producer) apply segregation or controlled blending, while the manufacturer uses a rolling-average mass balance.
2. Option 2 – Mass balance (with rolling average) for all actors: the same logic, but extended across the entire value chain, complemented by segregation or controlled blending.
3. Option 3 – Plant-level mass balance with volume reconciliation and credit allocation. The most flexible but also the most complex approach, with four sub-options:
   • 3a: credit allocation for processing as a service (the “toll-treatment” scheme);
   • 3b: 0% credit for materials outside the scope of Article 8;
   • 3c: unrestricted allocation;
   • 3d: allocation equitably distributed per economic area.

The toll-treatment mechanism covers the established industry practice in which the supplier of the waste or recycled material is also the receiver of the processed material (e.g. through take-back agreements or strategic partnerships). In this case, a higher recycled content can be assigned to the output fraction specifically destined for battery production — if this condition is not met, no recycled content higher than the average across all outputs may be allocated.

What the JRC Discarded

The report screened out several solutions at an early stage, typically because they are either practically unworkable or exceed the scope of Article 8:

• Identity preservation and segregation as exclusive models — most industry stakeholders consider these unworkable, since most processes rely on blending.
• Controlled blending as the exclusive model for the manufacturer — too rigid; each battery batch would have to contain exactly the annual average, requiring extra storage capacity.
• Book and claim — fraud risk, erosion of consumer confidence, exceeds Article 8.
• Plant-level mass balance without a crediting system — would unfairly rank companies of differing size serving different markets, and is incompatible with the practice of toll treatment.
• Group-level mass balance — according to the JRC’s own calculations, the carbon-footprint saving from avoided transport is minimal (in a sea + road scenario, with 20% recycled content, only about 0.15% relative to the battery’s full life-cycle footprint). This is compounded by the risk of material leakage, the difficulty of verification across different jurisdictions, and the clash with Article 8’s plant-level reporting requirement.
• Additionality relative to a plant baseline — in some elements it would contradict the Regulation’s approach.

How the JRC Evaluated the Options

The report compared the remaining options qualitatively across six effect categories:

1. Business continuity and competitiveness (compatibility with industry practice, economies of scale, a level playing field);
2. Resource efficiency and substitution of primary raw materials;
3. Climate change mitigation and sustainable production;
4. Consumer confidence in green claims;
5. Straightforwardness of notified bodies to operate (verifiability, including remotely);
6. Administrative burden.

The central conclusion is that no single option proved unequivocally superior — each involves trade-offs, and the weight of each effect varies by stakeholder group. That said, the mass balance sub-options that include a credit-allocation system (particularly 3c and 3d) performed best at preserving business continuity and competitiveness, and in delivering environmental benefits such as greater resource efficiency and lower emissions. In return, however, they require a dedicated mass-balance accounting system and carry a degree of fraud vulnerability that could undermine consumer confidence.

It is also worth noting a countervailing consideration: from the perspective of consumer confidence, it is precisely the simplest, proportionally allocated models (Options 1 and 2) that are strongest, because there the declared value directly matches the product’s actual average recycled content.

The Calculation and Verification Rules

The JRC provides guidance for all six options, and for two of them — Options 3a and 3d — fully developed “blueprints,” since these are the most complex; the others can readily be adapted from them. The base definition is the same in every case: the recycled content (ReCo) of a given metal X (Co, Li, Ni or Pb) is the ratio of the mass originating from recycling to the total mass of that metal in the product:

ReCo(X) = (recycled mass / total mass) × 100

Beyond this, the calculation rules define the system boundaries, the accounting periods, the requirements for data transfer between actors, the calculation points, the conversion factors that account for losses, and the transfer of credits between periods. The task of notified bodies is to verify the implementation of the traceability model, confirm the accuracy of data transfer, validate the calculations, and protect confidentiality along the value chain.

Hungarian Relevance: What This Means for the Domestic Battery Industry

Few EU Member States are as directly affected by this regulation as Hungary. In recent years the country has become one of Europe’s largest battery-manufacturing hubs: by 2026 Hungary’s operational battery cell capacity exceeds 87.5 GWh (Samsung SDI ~40 GWh and SK On 47.5 GWh), with CATL’s 40 GWh Debrecen plant now coming online, and Hungary targeting roughly 200 GWh of total capacity by 2030. With over €15 billion in committed investment, Hungary has emerged as one of Europe’s most dynamic EV battery manufacturing hubs, with a supply chain that now spans cell production, cathode materials and vehicle assembly. (TYCORUN Energy)

On the manufacturing side, the leading players are Samsung SDI (Göd), SK On (Komárom, Iváncsa), CATL and EVE Power (Debrecen) and BYD (Szeged); upstream, for example, EcoPro BM’s cathode plant in Debrecen and Huayou Cobalt are coming online. Because of Article 8’s logic, this means that Hungarian plants will have to document the built-in recycled Co, Li, Ni and Pb content separately for each battery model, each year and each plant. Several domestic plants belonging to the same corporate group may not consolidate their reporting — a decision that is significant both for administrative burden and for competitiveness. (TYCORUN Energy)

From a Hungarian standpoint, three points stand out:

• The chosen traceability model directly affects the competitiveness of domestic plants. Credit-allocation and toll-treatment solutions favour precisely the large, economies-of-scale plants that serve multiple markets and applications simultaneously — such as Hungary’s gigafactories.
• Meeting the targets requires domestic (or nearby) recycling capacity. If the 2031 and 2036 shares are to be covered from locally produced secondary raw materials, then proportional battery-recycling and metal-refining capacity must be built up alongside manufacturing — a genuine development opportunity for the domestic waste-management and circular-economy sector.
• In the absence of direct measurement, documentation and data-chain integrity will be decisive. Domestic plants and their suppliers will need to build a mass-balance accounting and traceability system that can withstand the — possibly remote — verification of notified bodies.

Conclusion: The Methodology Is the Real Stake

The key message of the JRC study is that in regulating recycled content in batteries, it is not the target figures but the underlying calculation and traceability methodology that will determine how workable, fair and credible the system becomes. Since metal content cannot be measured directly, everything hinges on the integrity of the documentation and the chain of custody — and on where the Commission draws the balance, in the delegated act, between flexibility (mass balance, credit allocation) and consumer confidence (simple, proportional accounting).

For the industry — and especially for the Hungarian gigafactories and the domestic waste-management sector — the task for the period ahead is to prepare in time: to build mass-balance-based accounting systems, secure the supply of secondary raw materials, and get ready for documentation that becomes mandatory from 2028 and tied to targets from 2031.

FAQ

When does documenting recycled content become mandatory?
For industrial (above 2 kWh), EV and SLI batteries, from 18 August 2028 (or 24 months after the legal act enters into force, whichever is later). For LMT batteries, from 2033. The concrete minimum targets take effect from 2031, and more strictly from 2036.

How large are the minimum targets?
2031: 16% cobalt, 6% lithium, 6% nickel, 85% lead. 2036: 26% cobalt, 12% lithium, 15% nickel, 85% lead. These may be revised in 2029.

Why can’t recycled content simply be measured?
Because a metal atom is chemically identical regardless of whether it comes from a mine or from waste. There is no reliable analytical method to distinguish them, so the system is based exclusively on documentation and traceability.

What exactly does the JRC recommend?
The JRC deliberately does not recommend a single solution. It maps the possible traceability models, screens out the unworkable ones, and provides calculation and verification templates for the remaining options. It also offers full “blueprints” for two options (3a and 3d).

Which model performed best?
None unequivocally. The plant-level mass-balance variants that include credit allocation (3c, 3d) are strong on business continuity, competitiveness and environmental indicators, but in return require a dedicated accounting system and carry a higher fraud risk.

How does this affect Hungary?
Hungary is one of Europe’s largest battery-manufacturing hubs, so domestic plants will have to document recycled content per plant, per model and per year. This raises the value of domestic battery-recycling capacity and of accurate mass-balance-based records.

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Sources:

• Pierri, E., Orefice, M., García-Gutiérrez, P., Bobba, S., Gaudillat, P., Mathieux, F., Huygens, D. (2026): JRC study on harmonised rules for the calculation and verification of recycled content in batteries – JRC recommendations to support the provisions of Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. JRC146717, EUR 40745, ISBN 978-92-68-40322-8, doi:10.2760/8978707
• Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning batteries and waste batteries (Batteries Regulation), in particular Articles 8 and 17
• ISO 22095:2020 – Chain of custody – General terminology and models
• ISEAL (2016): Chain of custody models and definitions
• European Commission – Directorate-General for Environment: Batteries (overview of the battery regulation)
• Industry capacity data on Hungarian battery manufacturing (2026)