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What you’ll need before you can file

The hard part of a CBAM declaration isn’t the calculation — it’s gathering twenty-seven pieces of information from six different parts of your organisation, several of which have long lead times. This is the full list, grouped by who holds it. Nothing here requires an account. Before you start collecting them, it’s worth understanding why this matters.

Why this is worth the effort

Your EU customer must declare the embedded emissions for your goods whether you supply verified emissions data or not. If you do not provide actual emissions, they can use the European Commission’s published default values for your country and product.

Those default values are intentionally conservative to reduce the risk of understating embedded emissions. For most CBAM goods, they are increased by a mark-up of 10% in 2026, 20% in 2027, and 30% from 2028 onwards. Fertilisers are the exception, with a 1% mark-up throughout.

The resulting embedded emissions determine the number of CBAM certificates your EU customer must surrender. If your installation’s verified emissions are lower than the applicable default value, providing verified emissions data can reduce the number of certificates they need to purchase, lowering the carbon cost of importing your goods.

Plan ahead

Most information inside your own organisation can usually be gathered within a few days. Verified reports from suppliers often take weeks or months, particularly where a supplier has not reported under CBAM before. Request those first.

Most items below point to the provision that requires them. A few — marked common practice — describe where this information usually sits in an organisation rather than something the regulation specifies, so confirm those against your own site.

Your own company records

Things your organisation already knows about itself.

Legal name of the operator
Your company registration or incorporation documents.
The registered legal name, not a trading name or abbreviation.
Operator registration number
common practice
Your company registration document. If you have registered in the CBAM Registry, the identifier issued there may be what is wanted here.
The identifier as issued. Leave blank rather than guessing which number applies.
Operator address, in English
Your company registration documents.
Street, city and country at minimum, rendered in English.
Installation name
The name your organisation uses for the site.
Consistent with how the site is named on your other documentation.
Installation address, in English
The site address, rendered in English.
Street, city and country at minimum.
Country of the installation, as a two-letter code
You already know this. Enter the ISO 3166 alpha-2 code — CA, TR, IN, CN.
Two uppercase letters. Anything else is rejected.
It keys both your electricity grid emission factor and the published default value your EU customer would otherwise have to use.
IR (EU) 2025/2621 Annex I
The source document behind each figure
Wherever the numbers above came from — the invoice, the meter reading, the spec sheet, the production report.
One document per figure, attached to the figure it supports. Your verifier will ask for these, and gathering them afterwards is much harder than keeping them as you go.

Customs documentation

Your export paperwork, or your customs broker.

CN code for each good you produce
Your export documentation, or your customs broker.
Exactly as it appears on your paperwork. Granularity varies by good — some are listed at four digits, others at six or eight. Do not shorten, pad or infer it.
It selects the benchmark and the default value. A recognised but incorrect CN code produces a confident, badly wrong answer — we have seen sibling codes differ by a factor of two. Never infer or simplify it.

Plant and production

Your site or production management — the people who run the process.

Coordinates of the main emission source
common practice
Plant engineering, or your environmental permit. Failing that, read it off a mapping tool.
Latitude and longitude of the principal stack or vent — the main emission source, not the site entrance or the office.
Your production processes and their routes
Production management.
For each CBAM good you produce: which production route makes it (for example blast furnace versus electric arc), and its CN code.
The route determines which benchmark and which default value apply.
Measurable heat imported from other installations
Energy or utilities management.
Yes or no. Measurable heat is a net heat flow crossing the installation boundary through identifiable pipelines or ducts, carried by a heat transfer medium — steam, hot air, water, oil, liquid metals or salts. It counts if a heat meter IS OR COULD BE installed: an unmetered flow through a pipeline still qualifies, so do not answer No merely because nothing is metered today. Heat generated and used internally is not imported.
IR (EU) 2025/2547 Annex I def (29)-(31)
Measurable heat exported to other installations
Energy or utilities management.
Yes or no, on the same definition as imported heat — including the "is or could be metered" test.
IR (EU) 2025/2547 Annex I def (29)-(31)
Zero-rated fuels used
common practice
Energy or process management.
Yes or no. If yes, you will also be asked to demonstrate why the zero rating applies.
Waste gases produced and used in the installation
Process engineering.
Yes or no. A waste gas contains incompletely oxidised carbon and arises from a process reaction rather than from ordinary combustion. Common in integrated steelmaking — coke oven gas, blast furnace gas, converter gas.
IR (EU) 2025/2547 Annex I def (32), def (16)
Waste gases imported from other installations
common practice
Process engineering.
Yes or no.
Waste gases exported to other installations
common practice
Process engineering.
Yes or no.
CO₂ capture used
common practice
Process or environmental management.
Yes or no. If yes, you will be asked where the captured CO₂ is transferred to.
Electricity produced inside the installation
common practice
Energy management.
Yes or no. Answering yes opens four follow-up questions about how it is generated and whether it leaves the process boundary — so answer it before you need those.
How much of each good you produced (the activity level)
Production records for the reporting period.
Net tonnes of each CBAM good produced during the period, per CN code. This is the activity level — the denominator of your specific embedded emissions — so it drives the figure directly. Where you produce the same good by more than one route, the regulation requires one combined figure covering all routes, not one per route.
IR (EU) 2025/2547 Art 1 def (2), Art 4(2), Art 4(6)
Steel grade (steel goods only)
Production specification.
Only asked for crude steel and iron & steel products. Ignore it for aluminium.

Finance and procurement

Invoices and bills. Usually the fastest route to fuel and electricity quantities.

How much of each fuel and carbon-bearing process material you consumed
Fuel quantities from invoices (finance or procurement) or from meter readings. Process materials — limestone, carbonates, electrodes, alloys, scrap — usually sit in plant or purchasing records rather than on a utility bill, so expect two sources.
A quantity per source stream for the reporting period, in tonnes, terajoules, or normal cubic metres for gases. A source stream is any fuel, raw material or product giving rise to emissions — not only things you burn. For steel: coke, coal, natural gas, fuel oil, and limestone, magnesite, other carbonates, carbonate ores, electrodes and electrode pastes, scrap, alloys, graphite. For aluminium: electrodes and electrode pastes, soda ash, limestone. Omitting process materials understates direct emissions, sometimes substantially.
This is the activity data behind your direct emissions. Without it there is no actual figure and your customer falls back to the default.
IR (EU) 2025/2547 Art 1 def (8) and (12); Annex I §3.13, §3.15, §3.17
Electricity consumed
Utility bills. Sub-meter readings if your plant meters by production line — but these are not required.
MWh for the reporting period. You do not need a per-process split: where an installation draws from several sources the default is the weighted average across the whole installation. Treating one process separately is an upgrade requiring evidence, not a prerequisite.
It drives indirect emissions. Reported for steel and aluminium, though excluded from the certificate obligation because both are Annex II goods.
IR (EU) 2025/2547 Art 9

Supplier information

Fuel specifications, and later your precursor suppliers. Longest lead time — start here first.

Carbon content or emission factor for each fuel
Your fuel supplier's specification sheet or safety data sheet.
One of three, per fuel: a carbon content fraction, an emission factor per tonne, or an emission factor per terajoule together with the net calorific value. Do not use a generic published figure if your supplier states one.
Biomass fraction of each fuel
The same fuel specification.
Zero for ordinary fossil fuels. Only non-zero where you burn a blended or biogenic fuel.
A verified emissions report from each precursor supplier
Each supplier of a CBAM-listed input you use — pig iron, DRI, crude steel, unwrought aluminium. Ask for their verification report, not for a number in an email.
A verification report issued by an ACCREDITED verifier, covering the reporting period in which the precursor was produced. An unverified figure from a supplier cannot be used. Where no verified report is available, you may use the published default value for that precursor instead. This is the longest-lead item on this list — your supplier may need to engage a verifier before they can answer, so ask first and ask early.
Precursor emissions carry into your own figure. Without a verification report your customer falls back to the published default, which carries a mark-up.
IR (EU) 2025/2547 Annex II A.1.4-5

Registry identifiers

Identifiers you look up or apply for, rather than ask a colleague for.

CBAM Registry installation ID
Issued when a non-EU operator registers an installation in the CBAM Registry, via the Commission portal for third-country operators.
Registration is voluntary for third-country operators. If you have not registered, leave this blank — never invent an identifier.
It lets your EU customer link your data to a registered installation.
European Commission, CBAM Registry guidance for non-EU installation operators
UN/LOCODE for the installation
common practice
The UN/LOCODE for the town or port nearest your installation. Look it up in the UNECE UN/LOCODE directory. Your logistics or shipping team may already use it on freight documents.
The five-character code, e.g. TRIST.

Ready when you are.

Gather the information once, then keep it with the figures it supports. The module calculates your specific embedded emissions and prepares the summary your EU customer needs.

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