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Explainer

What is a Digital Product Passport?

Explore the interconnected concepts behind DPP interoperability — from EU regulations to semantic web technologies.

DPP Knowledge Graph — Hover to explore relationships

issuedByhasExtensionhasChemistryhasExtensionhasExtensionhasExtensionhasExtensionregulatedBypartOfregulatedBycomposesCorerequiredrequiredrequiredcomposesCorerequiredrequiredrequiredrequiredDigital ProductPassportManufacturerBatteryExtensionChemistryLCA-EFExtensionSoCExtensionFoodExtensionComplianceExtensionEU BatteryRegulationSupplyChainTractus-XProfileBattery PassProfile

Schema Architecture — Core + Extensions

The Shared Core Schema provides 19 scalar leaf fields that apply to any product, while five extension modules add domain-specific data. Initiative profiles compose the core with specific extensions — for example, the Tractus-X Battery Profile requires Battery + SoC + Compliance (LCA-EF optional), while the Battery Pass Profile requires Battery + SoC + LCA-EF + Compliance.

LCA-EF ExtensionSoC ExtensionBattery ExtensionShared Core Schema v0.2

Initiative Profiles — How Extensions Compose

Each DPP initiative defines a profile that specifies which extensions are required and which are optional.

Tractus-X Battery Profile

Catena-X / Tractus-X Initiative

CORE19 scalar leaf fields
REQUIREDBattery + SoC + Compliance
OPTIONALLCA/Environmental Footprint

Focuses on battery data and regulatory compliance; LCA/Environmental Footprint can optionally be added for carbon footprint transparency.

Battery Pass Profile

Global Battery Alliance

CORE19 scalar leaf fields
REQUIREDBattery + SoC + LCA-EF + Compliance

Comprehensive EU Battery Regulation compliance with hazardous substance declarations, carbon footprint analysis, and regulatory certifications.

What is a Digital Product Passport?

A Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a structured, machine-readable record that describes a product's identity, composition, environmental impact, and lifecycle data. Mandated by the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), DPPs aim to make product sustainability information transparent and accessible across the entire value chain.

Why Does Interoperability Matter?

Multiple independent initiatives — Catena-X / Tractus-X, the Global Battery Alliance Battery Pass, and CIRPASS — are creating DPP schemas in parallel. Without interoperability, manufacturers must maintain separate passports for each ecosystem, regulators can't cross-reference data, and circular economy actors lose traceability across borders.

Linked Data as the Bridge

Linked Data technologies — RDF, JSON-LD, SPARQL, and OWL — provide a universal graph model where every entity has a globally unique URI. By normalizing DPPs into this shared semantic model, data from different initiatives can be merged, queried, and federated without custom point-to-point integrations.

Shared Core + Extensions

Our approach defines a product-agnostic core schema with 19 scalar leaf fields organized in 12 top-level properties (passportId, version, lastUpdated, product, manufacturer, manufacturingDate, placingOnMarket, economicOperator, status, identifiers, dataCarrier, composition) plus five modular extension schemas: Battery (chemistry, performance, status, materials, durability, circularity), Substances of Concern (substance identification and hazard classification), LCA/Environmental Footprint (carbon footprint, GHG Protocol scopes, lifecycle stages), Food (allergens, nutrition, origin traceability), and Compliance (REACH/RoHS, certifications, declarations, audit history). Each extension can be composed independently, enabling the schema to support new product categories without modifying the core.

Initiative Profiles

Five profiles define how each DPP initiative maps onto the core + extensions architecture. The Tractus-X Battery Profile requires core + Battery + SoC + Compliance (LCA-EF optional). The Battery Pass Profile requires core + Battery + SoC + LCA-EF + Compliance. Core-Only uses no extensions. Food Product requires Food + Compliance (LCA-EF optional). All Extensions includes all five. Each profile specifies its required and optional extensions, enabling adapters to produce correctly structured normalized outputs.

EU Battery Regulation

Starting February 2027, industrial, electric vehicle, and light-means-of-transport batteries placed on the EU market must carry a digital passport. The regulation requires data on carbon footprint, recycled content, chemistry, performance, and end-of-life handling — all fields covered by our schema extensions.

Enabling the Circular Economy

DPP interoperability enables circular economy actors — recyclers, refurbishers, second-life battery operators — to access standardized product data regardless of which DPP initiative the original manufacturer used. This lowers barriers to material recovery, performance assessment, and regulatory compliance.

See it in action

Try the platform yourself — resolve identifiers, normalize passports, and explore data as a semantic graph.