A CBAM certificate cost €75,36 a tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent in the first quarter of 2026, which is about R1 410 at R18,71 to the euro on 31 August 2026. A contractor buying cement or steel in South Africa pays none of it. The carbon number that reaches a local invoice is the R308 a tonne charged under the Carbon Tax Act 15 of 2019, and those two figures are constantly confused.
The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism moved from reporting to payment on 1 January 2026. Natalie Scott of Werksmans set out the position for exporters in a note published on 20 August 2026. What follows is that note converted into what it does and does not do to a price quoted here.
The bill sits with the EU importer
Direct legal liability under CBAM falls on the EU importer of record. Not on the South African producer, and certainly not on anyone buying the material locally.
That matters for how a brand answers the question. A cement or steel supplier selling into Gauteng is not paying a CBAM certificate on that tonne. Any price increase attributed to CBAM on a domestic sale needs a different explanation than the one being offered.
The exposure for an exporter is indirect and real. If a South African supplier cannot give its EU customer verified emissions data, that customer applies the EU default value instead, which is usually higher, or it buys from someone who can. Market access is lost through a customer's cost arithmetic rather than through a fine.
The 2026 arithmetic, and the 2034 version of it
The certificate obligation is phased. Certificates need cover only 2,5% of embedded emissions in 2026, rising step by step to 100% by 2034.
So the real bill is import volume, multiplied by embedded emissions, multiplied by that 2,5%, multiplied by the certificate price. On the same trade at the same certificate price, the 2034 charge is forty times the 2026 one. Anyone signing a multi-year EU supply agreement this quarter is pricing the small end of a curve.
The certificate price itself tracks the EU carbon market, calculated as the weighted average of EU ETS auction prices. The Commission publishes it quarterly through 2026 and weekly from 2027. The second quarter of 2026 came in at €75,28, eight cents below the first, so the euro price has been flat while the rand has not. That is a euro price on a European exchange. Convert it at the rate on the day you quote it rather than off an article, because a conversion done six weeks ago is a different number.
What the defaults cost is where the range shows. On Q1 2026 figures, default-value CBAM costs on steel run to roughly €100,55 a tonne for Turkey, €254,13 for India, €148,03 for Algeria and €94,14 for Vietnam. No South African figure appears in that comparison, so nobody should quote one. The spread between those four is the argument for plant-level data on its own.
South Africa lost a cushion it never knew it had
During the transitional phase, which ran from October 2023 to the end of 2025, the EU applied flat default emissions values. Those defaults happened to sit below actual South African carbon intensity, which gave local exporters an inadvertent advantage.
The definitive phase replaced them with country-specific defaults carrying an added mark-up, and the mark-up escalates: 10% above the country average in 2026, 20% in 2027 and 30% from 2028. South Africa's high electricity generation intensity makes it one of the more carbon-intensive exporting economies, so a country default is now a penalty rather than a shelter. The cushion did not shrink. It inverted.
The number that actually reaches a South African invoice
The domestic carbon tax rose from R236 to R308 per tonne with Phase Two in January 2026, and is legislated to reach R462 per tonne by 2030.
That is the rand figure in this story, and it is levied here on emitters here. The Werksmans note does not quantify what it adds to a bag of cement or a tonne of rebar, and neither should anyone else without doing the work on a specific product.
There is a reason a brand should want the local price rising rather than falling. Article 9 of the CBAM Regulation allows a carbon price already paid in the exporting country to be deducted from the EU certificate obligation. A credible domestic carbon price keeps the money in South African hands instead of sending it to Brussels as certificate purchases. From 2027 the European Commission will publish annual default carbon-price references for third countries in the CBAM registry, which is the mechanism by which South Africa's tax gets recognised in that deduction.
Do not price that deduction in yet. The Commission published only draft implementing rules for Article 9 on 13 May 2026. As at April 2026 no country had a formally confirmed qualifying carbon price, with South Korea's emissions trading scheme the most advanced candidate. The route exists in the Regulation. It has not yet been walked.
Claiming the deduction is a records exercise. Carbon Tax Act payment records and allowance certificates have to be audit-ready, per shipment, or the deduction is argued rather than evidenced.
The line that turns this into a construction story
CBAM covers iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertiliser, hydrogen and electricity today. In December 2025 the European Commission proposed extending it to roughly 180 further product categories made from steel or aluminium, and the proposal names construction and electrical equipment alongside machinery, vehicle parts and white goods.
Treat that as a proposal, because that is what it is, but it is a proposal that has started moving. The Council agreed its position on 12 June 2026 and the European Parliament is expected to take its position in September 2026. Formal adoption is targeted for 2027, with the new codes entering scope on 1 January 2028. Nothing is law yet and the dates are targets. If it is adopted, the exposure stops being a raw material question and becomes a question for anyone who fabricates, assembles or exports finished products built out of steel or aluminium.
The measurement work is the same either way. Steel and iron producers need mill-level emissions data. Aluminium smelters need the electricity source and grid emission factor behind each tonne, since power-intensive smelting drives most of the embedded carbon. Cement producers need the clinker-to-cement ratio and the kiln fuel mix per shipment, because those are the two variables the EU methodology weighs most heavily.
Arabella sits between the brand and the site, which is where this question is actually asked, usually as a contractor wanting to know why a price moved. What that involves is on the brand page, and the compliance notices we read each week sit in insights.
On Monday
If you export to the EU, ask your importer one question. Did your Q1 2026 declaration use our verified plant data or the country default, and what did that cost per tonne. The answer is the size of the prize for measuring properly.
If you do not export, take the last cement or steel quote on your desk and ask the supplier what the carbon component is and which carbon price it refers to. If the answer is CBAM on a domestic sale, it is wrong, and the National Treasury carbon tax rate is the only carbon number that belongs on that invoice.
