Suriya Edwards and Deborah Harvey, partners specialising in battery energy storage at law firm Freeths LLP, analyse new EU battery regulations around suppliers’ responsibility for collecting, treating and recycling collected batteries.
Shifts in the regulatory landscape – extended producer responsibilities
The battery regulatory landscape in the EU saw a significant shift in approach on 18 August 2025. The now familiar Directive 2006/66/EC has been repealed with effect from that date. This has significant implications as to who pays for the collection, treatment and recycling of batteries.
The shift change is being brought about by Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 which will fully replace Directive 2006/66/EC, and simultaneously it brings into effect on 18 August 2025 new regulations on the management of waste batteries and extended producer responsibilities.
The 2023 Regulation introduces enhanced obligations for producers of all categories of batteries such as industrial, SLI (starting, lighting, ignition) and electric vehicle batteries to take back waste batteries regardless of their shape, volume, weight, design, material composition, chemistry, use or purpose. These new obligations aim to improve sustainability, transparency, and circularity in battery use and disposal.
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The financial responsibility of the producer for the recycling of used batteries is expressed in recitals 101 and 106 of the 2023 Regulation.
This provides that “producers should have extended producer responsibility for the management of their batteries at the end-of-life stage. Accordingly, they should finance the costs of collecting, treating and recycling all collected batteries, carrying out compositional surveys of mixed collected municipal waste, reporting on batteries and waste batteries, and of providing information to end-users and waste operators about batteries and appropriate re-use and management of waste batteries…”
Producers (in the EU market) therefore will have the responsibility to finance the costs of collection, treatment and recycling, of batteries. Importantly the 2023 Regulation does not expressly deal with contractual transfer of the cost of recycling to the end-user / or buyer (as was possible previously); such attempts to transfer costs may prove to be inadmissible (not allowed).
Of course, the 2023 Regulation permits producers to itemise these costs at the point of sale (that is to build in the price at the supply contract or EPC contract price stage), however it remains questionable how feasible this is to do. How can costs be projected years ahead, within what could be a very different regulatory landscape?
By contrast UK’s Waste Batteries and Accumulators Regulations 2009 (“WBAR 2009”) is based on the earlier Directive 2006/66/EC, where producers are obliged to take back batteries from end users within a reasonable time if they are producers in the compliance period when the request for take back is made.
WBAR 2009, however, continues to facilitate contractual cost sharing in respect of the take-back costs of the producer. This means the UK position will now diverge from the EU position.
Analysis
We think that this can provide legal and commercial complexities for producers operating in the EMEA market. While some producers may seek to recover recycling costs through upfront pricing mechanisms, this approach will be difficult to implement in a price sensitive market, and vulnerable to legal scrutiny if it undermines the 2023 Regulation’s free-of-charge take-back obligation.
We’re therefore likely to see varied practices in respect of how producers deal with end-of-life costs. We expect these could involve contract price adjustments, reimbursement mechanisms (which will need to be scrutinised by legal teams including those of investors undertaking due diligence), or provisions that are situated within severability provisions.
Given that battery regulations can be updated and changed over the operational lifetime of a battery, the regulatory landscape could of course also change between now and then.
Breaches of the EU Directive could of course have local law implications as the Directive is implemented. The EU-UK juxtaposition also creates practical challenges for businesses operating across both jurisdictions.
While UK producers may contractually allocate recycling costs, EU producers will need to be seen to absorb them entirely. There will be some interesting commercial & drafting points for buyers and OEMs to grapple with!
About the authors
Suriya Edwards is a partner at the Construction & Engineering team at Freeths & specialises in renewable energy (battery storage and solar projects). Her experience extends to infrastructure & energy from waste projects, and mainstream construction commercial development work. She acts for developers, funders and contractors & has acted for utility companies and waste operators.
Deborah Harvey is a specialist energy projects lawyer with over 14 years of sector specific legal experience. She advises on contractual, regulatory and transactional energy matters across a range of renewable and clean technologies including rooftop and ground mounted solar, onshore wind, battery storage, hydrogen, hydro, anaerobic digestion and biomass.
