Korean survey: 99.3% of exporters face carbon-data demands, most still run on spreadsheets

Nearly every Korean export company now fields demands for product carbon emissions data, and the tooling behind the numbers has not kept up. A survey of 300 export companies by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and the Korea Industrial Complex Corporation (KICOX), published on August 20, 2026, found that 99.3 percent say customers have asked or plan to ask for emissions data, while two thirds manage that data without any shared platform. Survey figures are reported by Seoul Economic Daily and The Herald Business; Asia Business Daily covered the results on August 19, and Carbon Pulse also reported the survey.

The findings concern three groups at once: Korean exporters absorbing the data demands, the smaller suppliers who now receive the same requests one tier down the chain, and the EU importers whose CBAM declarations depend on whether those suppliers can produce verified numbers rather than spreadsheet estimates.

What the KCCI and KICOX survey found

The survey of 300 Korean export companies found that 99.3 percent face current or expected customer demands for product emissions data, and 90.3 percent require or plan to require the same data from their own suppliers. The two figures describe a cascade. Carbon-data demands, such as CBAM embedded-emissions requests, EU Digital Product Passport fields, and buyer ESG questionnaires, arrive first at the exporting company, which then pushes near-identical requests down to its own supplier base. A demand that started with EU regulation has become a standard clause in Korean supply chains.

The key survey figures are summarized below.

Spreadsheets, re-keyed data, and a template for every customer

Two thirds of respondents (66.3 percent) manage carbon data through in-house systems built with no shared standard, and 42.4 percent re-enter the data manually in spreadsheets or handwritten documents. A further 38.8 percent fill in a different template for every customer that asks, which multiplies the manual workload with each new data request rather than amortizing it.

Cost explains why the manual workflows persist. In the survey, 64.0 percent named system build and integration costs as the top barrier to adopting proper data infrastructure, and 62.7 percent pointed to a shortage of staff and time. The projected spending is substantial for a mid-sized exporter: 44.7 percent expect to pay between 10 million and 50 million won for carbon data management over three years, and 43.3 percent expect 50 million won or more. Respondents also set two conditions for joining any shared platform, with 54.0 percent requiring protection of proprietary business data and 54.0 percent requiring compatibility with international standards.

Korea's answer: the KICOX MRV platform and phased subsidies

The policy response runs through the Industrial Complex MRV Platform, which KICOX launched in June 2026, backed by phased support that starts with measurement hardware and ends at low-carbon investment. The platform covers the full measurement, reporting, and verification cycle and targets the data demands arriving under the EU CBAM and the Digital Product Passport, according to Seoul Economic Daily.

The planned support package covers four phases, listed in sequence below.

1. Subsidies for installing measurement equipment, including meters and sensors.
2. Vouchers for connecting company systems to the MRV platform.
3. Consulting subsidies for emissions calculation, plus wage subsidies for dedicated carbon-data staff.
4. Funding for low-carbon equipment and RE100 expansion.

Cho Young-jun, head of the KCCI Sustainability Management Institute, said verified carbon data has become an urgent matter because exports already face disruption without it, per Seoul Economic Daily. Ha Min-geun of KICOX said the agency plans to keep strengthening the platform's support for exporters. Korea is not the only exporting country moving from analysis to assistance: the same week, India ran a preparation session for its own exporters while the BRICS bloc condemned CBAM as punitive at the political level.

Why verified data is the money lever

Verified actual emissions data is the main lever for cutting CBAM costs, because imports declared without it fall back on default values marked up by 10 percent in 2026, 20 percent in 2027, and 30 percent from 2028 onward for steel, cement, aluminium, and hydrogen. The markup schedule under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2621 turns data capability into a price difference: a Korean mill that can hand its EU buyer a verified embedded emissions figure below the default value pays the real number, while a mill running on re-keyed spreadsheets risks failing verification and being priced at default plus markup.

The stakes for Korea were quantified six days before the survey. A report covered on August 14 put Korean steel's CBAM exposure near USD 4 billion, with about 70 percent of output on the carbon-intensive blast furnace route. The South Korea country profile shows why the data question compounds the exposure: the K-ETS deduction under Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2023/956 is small, so verified emissions and cleaner production are the levers that remain. The full list of data points an EU buyer needs sits in the guide to CBAM data requirements for exporters, and the survey's spreadsheet findings matter precisely because that data must survive an accredited audit, as described in CBAM verification for non-EU producers.

What the survey means for EU importers

For EU importers, the survey is a supplier-readiness snapshot: demand for emissions data is nearly universal among Korean exporters, but the systems producing the numbers are mostly manual. Three practical checks follow for importers sourcing from Korea or from any market with a similar profile.

• Ask which system produced a supplier's embedded-emissions figure, because a number re-keyed from spreadsheets and per-customer templates carries a higher risk of failing verification than one generated from metered data.
• Ask whether the supplier plans to join the KICOX MRV platform or an equivalent scheme, since platform-generated data with measurement equipment behind it is easier to verify for the 2026 reporting year.
• Model the certificate cost both ways, on the supplier's actual figure and on the marked-up default value, using the CBAM cost calculator, and put the difference on the table in the next price negotiation.

What happens next

KICOX plans to expand the MRV platform while the subsidy phases roll out, and the data produced now feeds the first annual CBAM declaration, due September 30, 2027, covering calendar year 2026 imports. Verifier registration in the EU opens on September 1, 2026, which starts the clock on getting installation-level data audit-ready. The burden the survey measures is not a Korean anomaly: on the EU side, the Commission's own explanatory material for the definitive period has swelled to the point that the 430-page CBAM guidance package is drawing criticism for the compliance load it implies. The Korean numbers simply show what that load looks like from the factory floor: 300 companies, one near-universal demand, and two thirds of them still answering it by hand.