CBAM Article 9: Carbon Price Deductions Every Exporter Should Understand

By Ahmed Medhat · Published11 May 2026 · Updated 2 September 2026

CBAM Article 9: Carbon Price Deductions Every Exporter Should Understand

An exporter's guide to the carbon price deduction in the CBAM regulation

Article 9 of the CBAM regulation lets the authorised CBAM declarant for your goods claim a reduction in the number of CBAM certificates it surrenders, to take into account the carbon price paid in a third country for the declared embedded emissions. For exporters in countries with operating carbon pricing schemes, Article 9 can reduce the certificates their buyers surrender.

This article explains what Article 9 says, what the deduction turns on, what is still to be settled in an implementing act, and what exporters can prepare now.

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1. What Article 9 says

Article 9 of the primary CBAM regulation is short. Stripped to its essentials, it provides four things.

First, an authorised CBAM declarant — that is, the EU importer of your goods, or its indirect customs representative — may claim a reduction in the number of CBAM certificates to be surrendered, to take into account the carbon price paid in a third country for the declared embedded emissions (Art. 9(1)).

Second, the price must have been "effectively paid", and any rebate or other form of compensation available in that country that would have reduced it is taken into account (Art. 9(1)).

Third, the documentation has to be certified by a person independent of both the declarant and the authorities of the third country, and it has to be accompanied by evidence of the actual payment (Art. 9(2)). A carbon price is "the monetary amount paid in a third country, under a carbon emissions reduction scheme, in the form of a tax, levy or fee or in the form of emission allowances under a greenhouse gas emissions trading system, calculated on greenhouse gases covered by such a measure, and released during the production of goods" (Art. 3(29)). Allowances received free involve no payment, so nothing is deducted for them.

Fourth, the route above is open only where the embedded emissions are determined on the basis of ACTUAL emissions. Where they rest on default values, Art. 9(4) allows the claim to be made only by reference to yearly default carbon prices, which the Commission MAY determine and publish, from 2027, for third countries where carbon pricing rules are in place.

Read the article and you will not find a scheme-approval mechanism anywhere in it. The Commission does not approve or refuse a national carbon-pricing scheme, and no country passes or fails a test for Article 9. There is one question and it is arithmetic: was a carbon price effectively paid on these emissions, net of any rebate or compensation, and can it be evidenced. An implementing act on the conversion arithmetic and the evidence is still to be adopted (Art. 9(5)); it does not create a list of approved countries.

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2. Why Article 9 is an exporter issue, not just an importer issue

In legal terms, Article 9 is exercised by the EU importer. They are the ones who hold the CBAM certificates, file the CBAM declaration, and claim the deduction. So why does the exporter outside the EU care?

Two reasons.

First, the importer cannot claim what the exporter cannot prove. The documentation requirements — receipts of carbon tax paid, evidence of ETS allowance surrender, audited records showing that no rebate was received — all originate in the country of production. Those records sit with the exporter. Without them, the importer cannot claim the reduction under Article 9(1)-(2); where default values are used, only the yearly default carbon prices of Article 9(4) apply.

Second, the Article 9 deduction sits alongside the choice between actual and default values. A verified actual value carries no mark-up. Where actual emissions are used and a carbon price was effectively paid in the country of origin, the declarant may also claim the Article 9(1) reduction.

Where the country charges nothing, or the allowances are received free, no monetary amount is paid, so there is no carbon price to deduct (Art. 3(29)).

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3. What the implementing act is expected to cover

The implementing act under Art. 9(5) settles the mechanics, not the entitlement. Article 9(5) lists what it covers: the conversion of the yearly average carbon price effectively paid, and of the yearly default carbon prices, into a reduction in the number of certificates; the conversion of a price in foreign currency into euro at the yearly average exchange rate; the evidence required of the actual payment; examples of relevant rebates or other compensation; and the qualifications and independence of the person who certifies the documentation.

From 2027 the Commission may also publish yearly default carbon prices for third countries where carbon pricing rules are in place (Art. 9(4)). That is a published price per country, used where the emissions themselves rest on default values — not a list of approved schemes, and not a verdict on anybody's climate policy.

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4. Article 9 by exporter country

Article 9 applies to every exporter, and what it yields depends on the country of origin.

A note on the four country descriptions below. Everything else in this article resolves to an EU act you can open. These four do not, and cannot: they describe legislation, allocation decisions and tax rates in Korea, China, South Africa and Türkiye, which no EU regulation publishes. They are our reading of those countries' own published measures as at October 2026, they are not EU-published values, and none of them is a figure to file a declaration on. Third-country carbon policy changes without warning and often mid-year — the position in the country of production can have changed since.

Coverage alone does not decide it. The Republic of Korea's K-ETS has run since 2015 with mandatory participation across most CBAM-relevant sectors. Its phase 4 allocation plan (2026-30), approved on 11 November 2025, keeps 100 % free allocation for steel and the other leakage sectors. Allowances received free involve no payment (Art. 3(29)), so a Korean steel good carries little or nothing deductible while that holds.

China is the same story from the other direction. The MEE work plan of 20 March 2025 extended the national ETS to cement, steel and aluminium, so the sectors that matter are inside the scheme rather than outside it — but allowances for the 2024 compliance year were allocated free at 100 % of verified emissions. The MEE's 2026 allocation plan (signed 1 September 2026) keeps allocation free for these sectors, at between 97 % and 103 % of emissions.

In South Africa a price is paid: the Carbon Tax Act has imposed a binding price since June 2019, and the headline rate rose to R308/tCO₂e on 1 January 2026. Even there, tax-free allowances, set per sector in Schedule 2 of the Carbon Tax Act and capped at 95 % of emissions in total (s. 14), reduce the tax paid, and the 2025 Budget proposed keeping the basic allowance until 31 December 2030. Article 9 takes any rebate or other form of compensation into account, so the deductible amount is what remains after those allowances. A higher rate of R640/tCO₂e on emissions above a company's approved carbon budget is law (Taxation Laws Amendment Act 5 of 2026) but applies only from a date the Minister of Finance has yet to set.

Türkiye enacted Climate Law No. 7552 in July 2025 and its secondary legislation followed in August 2026. Its pilot ETS covers the 2026 and 2027 system years: 2026 is reporting only, and the obligation to surrender allowances starts with 2027 emissions, with free allocation set at 100 % against benchmarks (Carbon Market Board decision KPK/2026/1; procedures approved 30 September 2026, no. 18626). For 2026 emissions there is no surrender obligation except under a voluntary complementary allowance price mechanism still being developed, so a reduction would need evidence of an amount actually paid under it; for 2027, a reduction depends on a price actually being paid under a mechanism still being designed.

Exporters from countries with no carbon price at all have no Article 9 reduction available.

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5. What exporters should be doing now

Until the implementing act is adopted, exporters cannot calculate a definitive Article 9 deduction. But preparation is not the same as calculation, and three workstreams are worth starting now.

The first is record-keeping. If your country operates any form of carbon pricing — tax, levy, ETS, or otherwise — start retaining the documentation that would be needed to evidence payment. This includes carbon tax assessment notices, ETS allowance surrender records, free allocation grant records, rebate notifications, and the underlying emissions reporting that links these to specific production volumes.

The second is engagement with your EU importer. The importer claims the reduction, so it needs to know what your installation paid, to hold the documentation you can provide, and to have it in time for its CBAM declaration.

The third is scenario modelling. The reduction takes into account the carbon price effectively paid in the country of origin for the declared embedded emissions, net of any rebate or other compensation available there (Regulation (EU) 2023/956, Article 9(1)), so model it from the price your installation can evidence paying.

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6. The honest caveat

This article describes the legal framework as it stands today. The detailed methodology for Article 9 deductions is being shaped by the EU Commission's implementing act, which is not yet adopted. The specifics of how documentation will be standardised and how the conversion arithmetic will work in edge cases are subject to the final text of that act. What is NOT in play is any list of approved schemes: Article 9 contains no such mechanism, and a claim rests on a payment your installation can evidence.

What is not subject to change is the principle in the primary regulation: where an exporter's country of origin imposes an effective carbon price on the emissions associated with goods exported to the EU, the EU importer of those goods can claim a reduction in CBAM certificates to take into account that carbon price — where the embedded emissions rest on actual emissions (Article 9(1)), or, for default values, by reference to yearly default carbon prices (Article 9(4)).

Exporters who keep evidence of the carbon price they pay will have it ready when the act enters into force.

Contact us about a country exposure assessment.