CBAM Article 9: Carbon Price Deductions Every Exporter Should Understand

CBAM Article 9: Carbon Price Deductions Every Exporter Should Understand

The exporter's guide to the most misunderstood — and potentially most valuable — provision in the CBAM regulation

Article 9 of the CBAM regulation is the provision that allows an EU importer to deduct, from the number of CBAM certificates they have to surrender, any carbon price that has already been paid in the country where the goods were produced. For exporters in countries with operating carbon pricing schemes, Article 9 is the single biggest lever for keeping CBAM costs competitive. For exporters in countries with no carbon price, it is the reason a national carbon policy is suddenly a commercial issue for your company, not just a policy issue for your government.

This article explains what Article 9 actually says, what the deduction actually turns on, what is still to be settled in an implementing act, and what every exporter to the EU should be tracking right now — even though the detailed implementing rules are not yet in force.

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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 — may claim a reduction in the number of CBAM certificates they have to surrender, equal to the carbon price that was effectively paid in the country of origin for the embedded emissions in those goods.

Second, the declarant must demonstrate, with documentation, that this carbon price was actually paid. Article 9 uses the phrase "effectively paid," meaning that any rebates, free allocations, or compensations granted by the country of origin must be subtracted. Only the net price that left the producer's pocket counts.

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)). The carbon price itself is a tax, levy or fee directly linked to greenhouse gas emissions, or a price paid under an emissions trading system. Voluntary carbon credits, generic fuel excise taxes and renewable energy obligations are not that.

Fourth — and this is the part most commentary gets wrong — 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 rebates and free allocation, and can it be evidenced. An implementing act on the conversion arithmetic and the evidence format is still to be adopted (Art. 9(5)), but it does not create a list of blessed countries, and waiting for one is not a strategy.

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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?

Three 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. The exporter is the only party able to assemble those records. An importer without an exporter who can document the carbon price will not get the deduction.

Second, the size of the deduction shows up in the price the importer is willing to pay. If two suppliers are otherwise identical but one paid a carbon price on the emissions in question and the other did not, the EU importer's landed cost from the first supplier is lower by the value of the Article 9 deduction. That price difference is real money in a competitive market.

Third, the Article 9 deduction interacts with the embedded emissions calculation. The deduction applies per tonne of CO₂ equivalent. Exporters who can prove low actual emissions through verified data already save money relative to default values. Exporters who can prove low actual emissions and a paid carbon price stack two reductions on top of each other.

For an exporter whose installation genuinely bore a carbon price, the combined effect of verified actual emissions plus the Article 9 deduction can move the effective CBAM cost from "punitive default value baseline" to "competitive with an EU producer." For an exporter whose country charges nothing — or allocates its allowances free, which comes to the same thing under Article 9 — the gap can be the difference between winning and losing the contract.

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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. Drawing on the Commission's consultation documents, several aspects are reasonably clear in shape even if the final text is not yet adopted.

The methodology will define how the carbon price paid in the country of origin is converted into a per-tonne reduction. For taxes and levies, this means dividing the total tax paid by the emissions volume to which it applied. For ETS-style schemes, it means using the average allowance price over the relevant year. Currency conversion will use a published exchange rate, most likely the European Central Bank reference rate for the relevant period.

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.

The documentation requirements are expected to mirror, in spirit, the verification requirements for embedded emissions. A producer will need evidence — typically issued by the national emissions trading authority or tax authority — that a specific quantity of carbon tax or allowances was paid in respect of the specific batches of goods exported to the EU, certified by someone independent of both the declarant and those authorities.

The act will also address the treatment of free allocations and rebates. If a producer received free allowances under a national ETS, the effective price paid is reduced by the value of those free allowances. The same applies to tax rebates and compensation schemes. Only the net carbon price that the producer actually bore counts.

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4. Which exporter countries are most affected

Article 9 affects every exporter, but the practical consequences vary enormously by 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 September 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 — check the position with your own advisers in the country of production before you price anything on it.

Coverage is the question everyone asks, and it is the wrong one. The Republic of Korea's K-ETS has run since 2015 with mandatory participation across most CBAM-relevant sectors, which makes Korea look like the strongest case anywhere. But phase 4 (2026-30), approved on 11 November 2025, keeps 100 % free allocation for steel and the other leakage sectors — and Article 9 takes free allocation off first. A Korean steel good therefore carries close to nothing deductible today. If the free-allocation share falls, the deduction becomes real from that year, and not before.

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. Watch the allocation benchmark, not the coverage announcement.

South Africa is the clearest case of a price genuinely 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, 60-95 % tax-free allowances remain in place to 2030, and Article 9 takes any rebate or allowance off first, so what is left to deduct is a fraction of the headline figure.

Türkiye enacted Climate Law No. 7552 in July 2025 and its secondary legislation followed in August 2026, but the pilot phase allocates allowances free against benchmarks. Nothing has yet been effectively paid for a Turkish exporter's declarant to evidence, so plan 2026 and 2027 declarations without a deduction. If the scheme starts charging, the deduction follows the payment — there is no approval to wait for.

Exporters from countries with no carbon price at all — which today still includes most major exporters to the EU across MENA, North Africa, and parts of Asia — face the unambiguous version of CBAM. No deduction is available. The full CBAM cost applies. The strategic implication is that domestic carbon pricing in your country becomes commercially relevant to your competitiveness in the EU market, regardless of whether you believe in it as climate policy.

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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 administrative cost of preserving these records is low. The cost of not having them when the implementing act lands is potentially significant.

The second is engagement with your EU importer. Article 9 will only deliver value if the importer is set up to claim it. That means the importer needs to know what your installation actually paid, has the documentation you can provide, and has the lead time to incorporate the deduction into their CBAM declaration. Initiating that conversation now — even before the implementing act is final — positions both parties to capture the deduction efficiently once the rules are clear.

The third is scenario modelling. Even without final rules, you can estimate the order of magnitude of an Article 9 deduction for your situation. If your origin country has a carbon price of around €10 per tonne of CO₂ equivalent, and your goods carry embedded emissions of two tonnes per tonne of product, an Article 9 deduction would reduce the CBAM cost on your product by approximately €20 per tonne. At the current Q1 2026 EUA price of €75.36 per tonne CO₂ equivalent and a 2026 phase-in factor of 2.5%, that translates to a reduction of around €0.50 per tonne of product in 2026, rising substantially as the phase-in factor increases. For a steel exporter shipping 50,000 tonnes a year to the EU, that small-looking per-tonne saving compounds into meaningful annual cost relief by 2030.

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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 in stakeholder consultation in 2026 and 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 is entitled to a corresponding reduction in CBAM certificates. The strategic implications of that principle — for exporter competitiveness, for procurement decisions, for national carbon policy — are already in play, regardless of when the implementing act lands.

Exporters who treat Article 9 as a future problem will be unprepared when the act enters into force. Exporters who treat it as a present opportunity will be in a position to capture it from day one.

If you need help quantifying the potential Article 9 deduction for your specific situation, or assembling the documentation that your EU buyer will need, the DeCarbonPro Country Exposure Assessment service is designed exactly for that conversation.