In six weeks, the European Commission publishes the Q3 CBAM certificate price.
That number isn't abstract. It's the exact carbon cost your EU buyer will start factoring into every purchase order for goods you shipped this quarter, steel, aluminium, cement, fertilizers, hydrogen.
Q1 and Q2 prices are already out. Q3 lands October 5.
Most exporters outside Europe are still treating CBAM as a reporting exercise. It stopped being one on January 1, when the definitive phase began.
Here's the line from PwC's guidance to EU importers that should be circulating far more than it is:
Companies "will have no choice but to shift away from non-cooperative suppliers" because of the financial and legal burden of CBAM non-compliance.
Your European buyer isn't only weighing price and quality anymore. They're weighing whether you can produce verified, product-level emissions data, because if you can't, the cost of sourcing from you rises sharply under EU regulation.
Where things actually stand, eight months into the definitive phase:
No certificates are being purchased yet. That starts February 2027. But the emissions data importers are collecting right now becomes the basis for what they'll owe then, and defaulting to the EU's standard emissions values, instead of your actual verified numbers, costs significantly more.
The first annual declaration is due September 30, 2027, covering everything imported in 2026. The clock on this year's exposure is already running, whether or not anyone's paid anything yet.
The Commission has run three implementation webinars this year, most recently on July 16, a signal that even inside Brussels, this is still being actively clarified. If the regulators are still explaining it, most suppliers haven't caught up either.
That gap is exactly where the commercial shift is happening quietly.
Manufacturers who can produce verified emissions data are becoming the suppliers EU buyers are able to keep working with. The ones who can't are the ones being quietly routed around, not through an announcement, through smaller and smaller purchase orders.
Every professional in this space is navigating something different. This short survey helps me understand exactly where you are, so the signals, context, and opportunities I share actually match what matters to you right now.
I sit on both sides of this corridor - manufacturers trying to prove they belong on the compliant list, and European buyers trying to find suppliers who already do.
If you're navigating this from either side, reply directly. I'll tell you honestly where the gap is for you.
— André
Sources: PwC, "The EU CBAM: Implications for supply chains" · European Commission, Taxation and Customs Union — CBAM Communication and News, July 2026 · CMS Law, "EU CBAM: First Price Announcement," April 2026