Updated October 12, 2026: the euro value given for the largest steel default-value correction was replaced by the legal rule on how a lower default value reduces the certificates owed.
CBAM Guide Weekly is the free email digest from cbamguide.com, and its first issue went out to subscribers on the morning of August 26, 2026. Each issue is republished here two days after it sends; the email arrives first. Issue #1 called it the September wall: September 2026 is the most loaded month CBAM has had since the definitive phase began, with eight dated events in thirty days, and it ends with the first materially higher quarterly certificate price of the definitive phase due on October 5. What follows is the full issue as subscribers received it.
The September calendar
Eight dated CBAM events land between September 1 and September 28, 2026, before the official Q3 certificate price publishes on October 5. The table below is the calendar as it stood at send time.
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| Sept 1 | The CBAM Registry opens for verifier registration: EU Login account first, then a Registry account, then the registration application to the national competent authority. Zero verifiers are accredited anywhere in the EU today, and the Commission still expects the first accreditations "around September 2026". The two-track process, explained |
| Sept 7 | The "European Convoy for Industrial Competitiveness" protest arrives in Brussels. Behind it: roughly 500 signatories and 40+ national steel associations demanding CBAM be extended to downstream goods in CN chapters 73 to 95. What the coalition wants |
| Sept 14-17 | European Parliament plenary. Parliament is expected to adopt its first-reading negotiating mandate on the downstream-extension proposal, one week after the convoy. How the battle lines formed |
| Sept 18 | Australia's safeguard mechanism review, which is weighing an Australian carbon border measure, closes for submissions. Background |
| Sept 24 | The Council's Ad Hoc Working Party on CBAM meets in Brussels. |
| Sept 25 | The next WTO Dispute Settlement Body meeting, where Russia's second panel request in DS639 is expected. The EU blocked the first request in July; under WTO rules, a second request makes panel establishment quasi-automatic. Why the panel now gets established |
| Sept 28 | The Commission's consultation on widening the product scope of the EU Steel Regulation closes. Not CBAM itself, but the same downstream steel fight on a second front: cast iron pipes and tubes, steel wire and forged bars are up for inclusion in the 50% tariff regime that replaced the steel safeguard in July. |
| Sept, date TBC | Member states are expected to vote on the Article 9 carbon-price-deduction implementing act, the rule deciding how carbon prices paid abroad get deducted from CBAM liability. What is at stake |
Then October 5: the official Q3 certificate price. Which brings us to money.
Every date above, by email the day it happens.
CBAM Brief emails you the day a certificate price, default value, CN code or deadline changes, and sends the full data files every week. One company, up to 10 people. EUR 199 a month.
Request Brief →Certificate price alerts and the regulatory changes that matter. Get weekly updates on what happens regarding anything CBAM-related. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
We store only your email address for these alerts. Privacy policy
Price corner: Q3 is tracking six to seven euros above Q2
The official Q2 2026 certificate price is €75.28/tCO₂e, published July 6 (Q1 was €75.36), and the Q3 number due October 5 is shaping up materially higher. EUA settlements have held a band of roughly €81 to €84 all quarter and spent late August at the top of it, closing near €84 on August 24, a one-month high. That puts the Q3 price on track to land roughly €6 to €7 above Q2, in the €81 to €82.50 area, on our estimate. It would be the first materially higher quarterly price of the definitive phase, and it prices certificates importers will be buying when sales open February 1, 2027.
Every quarter-to-date figure is an estimate until the Commission publishes; the remaining auctions can still move the average. Newsletter subscribers get the official Q3 number by email the morning it drops.
[Updated estimate as of September 24, 2026: after EUAs rallied to a nine-month high in mid-September, the Q3 price is now tracking EUR 82.50 to 83.50, roughly EUR 7 to 8 above Q2. Final outcome, October 6, 2026: the official Q3 price published October 5 at EUR 82.32, EUR 7.04 above Q2 and within the EUR 81 to 82.50 area this issue projected - see the official Q3 2026 certificate price article.]
Live tracker: ETS price vs. published quarterly averages · Mid-quarter analysis
The money story: every corrected default value went down
Importers who provisioned 2026 CBAM costs on the January default-value tables have likely set aside too much, not too little. On August 10, DG TAXUD finally posted the corrected default-values Excel, ten days after Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1740 corrected the tables with retroactive effect from January 1. A steelnews.biz analysis then found the pattern: of the 46 genuine numerical replacements in the correction, all 46 lowered the value.
The largest steel correction removes 0.088 tCO₂ per tonne. The free allocation adjustment is a fixed amount per tonne, so a lower default value comes off the certificates owed in full, together with its 10% mark-up: 0.0968 certificates per tonne, or 968 per 10,000 tonnes, wherever an obligation remains. The only increases anywhere: two aluminium precursor CN codes, up about 47.5%.
Same page, same month: the Commission published its ten guidance documents for the definitive period on August 14, then added an eleventh on August 24, dedicated verification and accreditation guidance for verifiers and national accreditation bodies. One TAXUD page has become the most consequential download destination in CBAM.
Certificate price alerts and the regulatory changes that matter. Get weekly updates on what happens regarding anything CBAM-related. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
We store only your email address for these alerts. Privacy policy
The bottleneck: 13 months, zero verifiers, and a mandatory site visit
The first CBAM declaration is due September 30, 2027, and any declarant who wants to use actual emissions values needs an accredited verifier that does not yet exist anywhere in the EU. Using actual values is how importers skip the default-value markup that rises from 10% now to 30% by 2028. And when verifiers do arrive, the rules give them no shortcut: in an installation's first verification year, a physical site visit is mandatory, with only a narrow force-majeure exception. Virtual visits and waivers only unlock in later years, and only for plants that have not significantly changed.
[Update, September 24, 2026: the first accreditation has since been announced. EmiCert S.A. (Greece) announced on September 23, 2026 that ESYD has accredited it as the first CBAM verifier; the Commission's official list still showed zero as of September 24. The announcement, and its caveat]
DG TAXUD's head of unit put the capacity question plainly to would-be verifiers: "those who will access accreditation first will be better placed to provide services to clients." A regulator telling applicants to hurry tells you what the queue will look like.
Why every first verification includes a site visit · Verification guide for importers
Quick hits from issue #1
- Korea: a KCCI/KICOX survey of 300 exporters finds 99.3% face customer demands for carbon data, and two thirds manage it without any shared platform. Separate analysis puts the CBAM exposure of Korean steel alone at roughly $4 billion. The survey · The exposure math
- Geopolitics: BRICS environment ministers, meeting in New Delhi on August 18, jointly called carbon border measures such as CBAM unilateral, punitive, discriminatory and protectionist, and not in line with international law, days after the Commission publicly rejected the US ambassador's claim that CBAM is a tariff. With Russia's panel request expected at the DSB on September 25, the opposition is now bloc-level and on paper. More
- Guidance pushback: the definitive-period guidance stack now tops 430 pages across eleven documents published this month, and compliance teams are saying so out loud. More
- ETS review: rapporteur Peter Liese wants Parliament and Council positions final by year-end so that ETS-review trilogues can start in January 2027, which keeps the CBAM phase-in debate alive well past September. More
September is supplier-chasing season
Importers planning to declare actual values for 2026 need their suppliers' data to exist before verifiers start booking site visits. The free supplier data-request generator builds the exact request letter, field by field, in the browser.
The numbers, by email, the day they change.
The corrected default values moved real money. The Q3 price will move more. CBAM Brief sends every default value, benchmark and price as data files each week, with an alert the day one changes. EUR 199 a month.
See what Brief covers →CBAM Guide Weekly sends by email first, every week, free. The signup forms on this page deliver issue #2 to your inbox the morning it goes out.
Certificate price alerts and the regulatory changes that matter. Get weekly updates on what happens regarding anything CBAM-related. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
We store only your email address for these alerts. Privacy policy