CBAM Knowledge Hub
Regulatory guides, calculation methodologies, and compliance resources for exporters to the EU. Updated as the EU Commission publishes new implementing acts.
The question is no longer whether CBAM is coming. It is what it adds to the landed cost of a tonne this quarter, from this supplier, and what it would take to bring that down.
On default values, CBAM adds about €39 to a tonne of Egyptian urea imported in the second quarter of 2026, €41 to a tonne of Algerian urea and €150 to a tonne of Chinese. Each step names its source, and the result is set against the average value Eurostat records per tonne at the EU border.
Six official documents and three free calculators, in the order a CBAM liability is worked out: embedded emissions, the default value and its mark-up, the free allocation deducted, and the price. With the arithmetic run on one good, every input taken from an act or a Commission publication.
Our regulation watch read the sixteen acts it holds against their published records on every day of August 2026 from the 7th, and no English text or figure moved. The Commission published instead: a restated default values workbook, ten guidance documents and a verification guidance. What each one means for a producer or an importer, and where the new compliance change log keeps this record.
The DeCarbonPro CBAM Calculator is a predictive tool designed to help non-EU operators and exporters estimate the CBAM certificate cost their EU buyers face on goods imported from 2026.
The declaration and the surrender are due on 30 September. The status of authorised CBAM declarant carries more than that: keeping the registry information current, a guarantee for recently established applicants, four years of records, reviews that can reopen a year, and a set procedure if the status is revoked. Each duty, with the article that sets it.
Updated 17 October: Intertek is on Swedac's register from 13 October, and Accredia's published decision names SGS, Bureau Veritas and RINA, each for its own activity groups. Five verification bodies now hold CBAM accreditation we can read on a national accreditation body's register or published decision, three of them without every group. Updated 2 October: Bureau Veritas announced CBAM accreditation on 29 September, and RINA announced on 1 October the first CBAM accreditation granted by Accredia in Italy. On 14 September 2026 the Hellenic Accreditation System signed a scope annex extending EMICERT's accreditation to CBAM verification, all eleven activity groups. As far as we can find, it is the first accreditation of its kind on any national register. The Commission's page still says the list of accredited verifiers "will be published", and registration in the CBAM registry could not begin before 1 September. What was actually granted, what the Commission's 29 September table says about the other 27 accreditation bodies, why there is no list yet, and what an exporter can do this month.
Annex I to Regulation (EU) 2023/956 lists six cement lines, from calcined kaolinic clay to other hydraulic cements. Two of those codes, 2523 10 00 and 2523 90 00, each hold a white good and a grey good with different default values, and Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1740 separates them by TARIC code. The six lines, the four TARIC codes, what the split changes for a tonne from Egypt, what happens where a country shows no value, and what a mix of white and grey clinker takes.
CBAM covers the goods listed in Annex I to Regulation (EU) 2023/956, and the list is written in Combined Nomenclature codes at four different levels, with exceptions and "ex" entries. How to read it for your own code, which headings are not on it, and where to try your code.
The chain the acts use to get from an installation's fuel bills to the carbon in one tonne of a good: source-stream emissions, attribution to the production process, the activity level, the precursors, and the specific embedded emissions, each step with its equation in Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2547.
The CBAM dates from the Q3 2026 price to the first cancellation, in order, each with the act that sets it and who it binds: the 50 % quarterly holding from 2027, certificate sales from 1 February 2027, the first declaration and surrender by 30 September 2027, and UK CBAM from 1 January 2027.
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Hydrogen (CN 2804 10 00) is the one CBAM good other than electricity with no 50-tonne exemption. Only its direct emissions count, the acts name which hydrogen and which process emissions are in, and a listed country's own default can be higher than the "Other countries and territories" value.
The questions importers bring to CBAM, each answered from the article that settles it: the 50-tonne threshold, authorised declarant status, the first declaration by 30 September 2027, default values and their mark-up, verification, the certificate price, the quarterly holding, carbon prices paid abroad, and the penalties.
On 15 September 2026 the European Parliament adopted its first-reading position on extending CBAM to downstream goods, then sent the file back to committee for trilogue. A negotiating position is not a law, and nothing in Annex I moved that day. What the three institutions actually disagree about is scope: roughly 180 products in the Commission's proposal, around 200 in the Council's general approach, 457 in Parliament's position. The file, the dates, the two mechanisms being widely misdescribed, and why this is not the amendment that already passed.
Article 14 of the calculation act has three paragraphs and each answers a different question. One installation across two reporting periods is a weighted average. Several installations is a weighted average BY DEFAULT. Evidence shown to the verifier that a given production process consumed material from only one installation, or a subset, narrows it to that installation or that subset. The trigger is multiple INSTALLATIONS, not multiple suppliers and not multiple deliveries, and the report has to state which paragraph produced the figure. The three ways this goes wrong in practice.
The verifier's first request is the latest version of your monitoring plan. The calculation act sets out what has to be in it: twenty-two numbered elements, fourteen lettered sub-points, a diagram that has to evidence neither double counting nor data gaps, and a control system with eight parts. The act sets the language and the content. It sets no authority to send it to and no date. The full list, grouped by what each element does, with its article.
The calculation act calls the denominator the functional unit. The general rule is a tonne of the good under its CN code, and there are three exceptions: the kWh for electricity, kilograms of nitrogen contained for three fertiliser CN codes, and tonnes of clinker contained for four cement codes. The rules in the order they apply, the cement code the article deliberately leaves out, and the difference between what an operator determines and what a declarant files.
Verification applies where embedded emissions are determined on actual emissions. The acts list what the verifier receives from the operator, fix a 5 % materiality level per tonne of good, allow four opinion statements of which three are "unsatisfactory", and keep the first verified period outside the conditions for waiving the physical site visit. The list, the numbers and the dates the acts do and do not set, each with its article.
The default values for electricity imported into the Union are one annex of one act: seventeen countries and territories with their own CO₂ emission factor, and the European Union value. A country that is not on the list, and is in scope, takes the EU factor. Where the figures are published, the order in which the rules apply, and the two ways a factor can be replaced.
Imported electricity is priced on default values unless the authorised CBAM declarant proves five cumulative criteria: a power purchase agreement with the producer, a direct or uncongested connection, no more than 550 grammes of fossil CO₂ per kilowatt-hour, hourly firm nomination, and an accredited verifier certifying it all. What each one means, what evidence the act asks for, and what the producer has to put in its report.
The two lists name the same headings in five sectors, and the same carve-outs but one. The differences are one sector, one carve-out, one start date and one way of reading the list. Here is the comparison, code by code, with the authority behind each side.
The CBAM Omnibus Amendment: What Changed in 2025 and Why It Matters for Exporters The exporter's guide to the structura...
The moment you have to ask a supplier for emissions data is where most filings go wrong. What the declaration needs from each installation, what the acts oblige a registered operator to hold, what the verified report contains, and how to ask so the answer is usable.
For 2026 the price of a CBAM certificate is the quarterly average of the auction clearing prices of EU ETS allowances, weighted by volume, from the common and opt-out auction platforms, cancelled auctions excluded. Not an exchange price, and from 2027 a weekly average.
A producer of complex goods can only use a supplier’s actual emissions figure for a precursor when it comes from a verification report issued by an accredited verifier, valid for that sector, covering the period the precursor was made. Without that, the default value is mandatory.
CBAM Phases and Timelines: The Definitive Era (2026–2034) The Exporter’s Master Schedule for Securing European Market A...
Regulation (EU) 2023/956: The CBAM Legal Foundation, Read for Exporters An article-by-article walk-through of the prima...
CBAM Certificates in 2027: What Your EU Buyer Must Do and How You Help Them Your EU buyer does not just surrender CBAM c...
The CBAM Default Value Mark-Up Rises Until 2028 — Here Is the Schedule Annex IV point 4.1 of Regulation (EU) 2023/956 se...
CBAM Non-Compliance Penalties: What the Regulation Sets The regulation fixes how the penalty is calculated: per CBAM cer...
CBAM Exposure Methodology Overview How Your Carbon Data Sets Your Buyer's CBAM Cost The EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mec...
EU CBAM Authorised Declarant Status Application Guidance The Exporter’s Complete Guide to Securing Your Buyer's Legal C...
How to model your future CBAM cost exposure Moving from Compliance to Planning: Forecasting CBAM Cost For non-EU operat...
CBAM Article 9: Carbon Price Deductions Every Exporter Should Understand An exporter's guide to the carbon price deduct...
The EU Commission has published the first official CBAM certificate price for Q1 2026: €75.36 per tonne of CO₂e — the price of CBAM certificates for the embedded emissions of goods imported in Q1 2026, which authorised CBAM declarants surrender.
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or compliance advice. Contact DeCarbonPro for tailored guidance.
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