A shipment of battery-grade nickel can leave Indonesia with everything a buyer once required: the correct chemical specification, weight, price and delivery date. Soon, that will no longer be enough. From February 2027, electric-vehicle batteries placed on the European Union market must carry a digital battery passport. It will link the physical battery to information on its composition, carbon footprint, recycled content and responsible sourcing. The mineral and its digital twin will have to arrive together.
That changes the geography of critical-mineral power. While mines, smelters and refineries remain indispensable, market access will increasingly be decided by whether producers can prove where a material came from, how it was transformed, what emissions it accumulated and who had custody of it. A broken data trail can diminish the commercial value of an otherwise usable shipment.
For ASEAN, the stakes are unusually high. The International Energy Agency reported in 2025 that the average share of the three largest refining countries across six key energy minerals rose from roughly 82 per cent in 2020 to 86 per cent in 2024. Around 90 per cent of the growth in refined supply came from the largest supplier alone: Indonesia for nickel and China for the other major minerals. In its 2026 outlook, the IEA found that concentration had tightened further in 2025.
Physical Dominance, Digital Dependence
In a previous piece for Geopolitical Monitor, I have argued that extraction alone will not prevent South-East Asia from becoming the quarry of the energy transition. The passport problem is the next layer of that argument. A country can dominate physical output and still remain a rule-taker in the systems that determine whether its material qualifies for premium customers, public procurement, green finance or preferential supply arrangements.
This is no longer only an EU compliance story. In June 2026, G7 leaders committed to developing harmonised and interoperable traceability mechanisms for critical minerals, beginning with pilot systems for nickel and lithium. Their declaration explicitly connected traceability with standards-based markets, supply-chain resilience and future market-shaping measures. Nickel was not chosen by accident. Any system designed around that mineral will inevitably reach deep into Indonesian production and the wider South-East Asian battery chain.
Where the Traceability Trail Breaks
The technical problem is more stubborn than the policy language suggests. An April 2026 IEA report, drawing on a joint IEA-OECD survey of 82 companies, found that more than two-thirds had some form of traceability system. Yet only 30 per cent reported full coverage, while end-to-end visibility often fell sharply beyond direct suppliers. Fifty-six per cent named implementation cost as a leading obstacle; 55 per cent cited poor interoperability; and 32 per cent identified weak data quality or credibility as a major operating challenge.
The midstream is where clean narratives go to die. Minerals are blended, aggregated, reprocessed and traded between companies using different software, reporting conventions and verification methods. Commercially sensitive information becomes harder to share just as the chain of custody becomes harder to reconstruct. Academic research on digital product passports reaches a similar conclusion: the value of a passport depends less on the QR code than on the availability, reliability and controlled exchange of data among every actor in the value chain. A sophisticated downstream platform cannot compensate for an upstream supplier recording information on paper, or not recording it at all.
Recent experience shows how traceability failures can accumulate from the port to the production line. In July 2026, Indonesian shipments of mixed hydroxide precipitate used in electric-vehicle batteries were delayed after authorities raised concerns about rare-earth elements contained as by-products. Indonesia had not established permissible thresholds for those elements, prompting the presidential chief of staff to urge agencies not to obstruct exports in the absence of clear rules. The material remained commercially usable, but uncertainty over how it should be measured and validated prevented it from moving.
International battery-passport trials demonstrate how the same problem compounds downstream. In the Global Battery Alliance’s 2024 pilots, ten consortia involving cell manufacturers representing more than 80 per cent of the global electric-vehicle battery market attempted to trace real supply chains, including nickel. Coverage ranged from complete mine-to-vehicle visibility to participation by only one supply-chain company; one pilot did not reach the mining or refining stages, and the average reporting rate was 66 per cent. The gap persisted in the Alliance’s 2026 Operational Trials: Jinko ESS reported mapping its supply chain to the mining tier, but its collection of primary carbon-footprint data had not yet reached that far upstream, even as it expanded in Europe’s energy-storage market. Together, these cases expose the difference between knowing where a material originated and possessing verified information that can travel with it. Under the EU Batteries Regulation, the passport obligation applies to the finished battery rather than the Indonesian nickel cargo. Nevertheless, a European manufacturer unable to substantiate the material’s custody, transformation or emissions history may have to commission additional verification, divert it elsewhere or choose a supplier with a more complete data trail.
ASEAN’s Missing Data Spine
ASEAN has recognised parts of this challenge, but its policy architecture remains divided. The ASEAN Minerals Development Vision and Minerals Cooperation Action Plan 2026–2030 seek to make the region a leading destination for minerals investment, strengthen responsible sourcing and improve access to global markets. The action plan also calls for data to be supplied in common formats through an enhanced ASEAN Minerals Information System.
But that system is primarily designed around pre-competitive geological information, production statistics, trade data and investment promotion. It is not yet a shipment-level chain-of-custody system. Separately, ASEAN leaders adopted guidelines for an ASEAN battery passport in late 2025. A June 2026 ERIA assessment found uneven readiness: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand had made progress, while fragmented policies and limited technical compatibility persisted across the region. In other words, ASEAN is developing an investment database and a battery passport, but it does not yet have the mineral-to-market data spine connecting them.
Build the Passport, Shape the Rules
The answer is not to copy every foreign rule or build one enormous ASEAN blockchain. Rather, the consensus points towards a regional minimum viable mineral passport that is deliberately interoperable with major end markets. ASEAN should begin with nickel and lithium, matching the G7 pilot sequence, and agree on a limited set of fields: mine and facility identity, chain of custody, material transformation and blending, product grade, emissions methodology, due-diligence status and independent verification.
The architecture should be technology-neutral and permissioned. Public information could sit within the ASEAN Minerals Information System, while commercially sensitive data remain with companies and accredited verifiers. Common identifiers and open data standards would allow customs agencies, manufacturers and regulators to confirm claims without forcing every participant onto the same proprietary platform.
ASEAN should also negotiate mutual recognition while the rules are still being written. The EU, G7, Japan, South Korea and Australia should be treated not merely as export destinations but as co-design partners. At home, shared verification facilities, technical assistance and targeted finance will be essential so that compliance costs do not expel smaller miners, processors and suppliers from premium supply chains.
The Economic Visa
Traceability is not inherently a foreign constraint. Done well, it could allow ASEAN producers to distinguish lower-carbon material, secure longer contracts, attract better financing and retain more value from recycling. The danger lies in allowing verification rules, data formats and accreditation systems to harden elsewhere before the region develops the capacity to shape them.
A mineral passport is therefore more than a sustainability label; it is an economic visa. ASEAN may possess the ore, the processing capacity and an increasing share of global supply. But if someone else controls the information required to validate each shipment, physical dominance will not translate automatically into market power. The next critical-mineral chokepoint may not be a mine, a smelter or a strait. It may be a field in a database, defined elsewhere and impossible for a supplier to fill.
