CBAM does not treat steel, aluminium, cement and fertilisers the same way: which emissions count, the mark-ups on default values, the benchmarks and the precursors all change. CBAMeter applies the right rule good by good, starting from the CN code on the offer or the customs declaration.
For products in chapters 72 and 73 only direct emissions count (Annex II of Reg. 2023/956): the electricity used by the producer does not enter the cost. The cost depends on the supplier's production route — blast furnace, electric arc furnace, direct reduction — and the free-allocation adjustment uses the per-route benchmarks of Reg. 2025/2620, including the dedicated one for gas-based DRI. Precursors (pig iron, semi-finished products) and the scrap share are handled in the calculation.
The steel page →Direct emissions only in the cost here too (Annex II), CO₂ and PFCs: the electricity used for smelting does not enter the cost and does not need to be calculated. What weighs is the precursors — from unwrought aluminium to profiles and sheets — and the scrap share in the input, which counts as zero (Reg. 2025/2547). CBAMeter asks for the percentages it needs and flags when a figure expected for the sector is missing.
Estimate a profile or a sheet →Cement is outside Annex II: indirect emissions enter the cost, not just the report. For "other" hydraulic cements (CN 2523 90 00) blending white clinker, grey clinker and calcined clay, the benchmark is not a single number: it is the weighted average of the composition (Reg. 2025/2620). The clinker share is a parameter of the product, not a footnote.
Estimate a cement shipment →Indirect emissions in the cost, as for cement. And a rule of their own: the mark-up on default values is 1%, not the 10–20–30% schedule of the other sectors (Reg. 2025/2621), so the gap between default and actual data is smaller and has to be measured, not assumed. Nitrogen content and CO₂ input for urea are parameters of the calculation.
Estimate a urea shipment →The 50 tonnes of net mass per year are counted by adding up steel, aluminium, cement and fertilisers imported by the same importer; electricity and hydrogen are excluded. The exemption must be declared on each customs declaration, and whoever exceeds it in November pays on the whole year.
EU default values are built never to understate: the country average plus a mark-up that, for steel, aluminium, cement and hydrogen, rises from 10% in 2026 to 30% from 2028, and stays at 1% for fertilisers. The supplier's actual data, verified by an accredited verifier, replaces them and CBAMeter recalculates.
Default values (Reg. 2025/2621, with the corrections of Reg. 2026/1740 already applied), benchmarks and the certificate price from the EU source, for every sector. A revision of the defaults is due by 2027.
Hydrogen (2804 10 00) is covered: direct emissions only, no de minimis threshold. Electricity (2716) has rules of its own — kWh as the unit, strict criteria for actual data, a different declarant — and CBAMeter does not handle it today. If you import electricity, talk to us first: better said here than discovered later.