What Is CBAM — and How Should Thai Exporters Prepare?
CBAM is no longer a distant concern — Thai exporters trading with the EU are being asked for carbon data directly by their importers, and the organizations that can answer fastest are the ones that keep the orders.
The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is rewriting the rules of global trade. Iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen and electricity entering the EU must report their embedded emissions — and in the next phase, importers will have to purchase CBAM certificates that match the actual emissions.
Why Thai exporters should care today
EU importers will request carbon data directly from their Thai suppliers. Organizations that already hold verifiable corporate carbon footprint (CFO) data can answer immediately, while those still tracking emissions in spreadsheets typically need months — and often get pushed back over the provenance of their numbers.
Where to start
- Prepare a corporate carbon footprint (CFO) covering all 3 Scopes under the GHG Protocol / ISO 14064-1
- Collect production data per product line, paving the way to a Carbon Footprint of Product (CFP)
- Use a system that records the source of every figure (EF source + version) so verifiers can confirm it
GCarbon takes care of steps 1 and 3 on a single platform — record once, submit to every standard.
“EU importers will not wait — the supplier with carbon data ready is the supplier that stays on the order book”
The timeline exporters need to know
CBAM's transitional period began in late 2023, with EU importers reporting embedded emissions quarterly. In the definitive regime, importers must purchase CBAM certificates matching actual emissions — and that cost flows down to suppliers who cannot provide data, or whose data is worse than default values.
The first wave covers iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen and electricity, and the list is expected to expand at review. Organizations inside these value chains — even without direct exports — will still be asked for data through their exporting customers.
What importers actually ask for
The EU side wants more than a total: emissions per unit of product with a verifiable calculation method. That means process-level data, energy sources split out, and emission factors with clear provenance. A solid corporate-level CFO is the right first rung before going product-level (CFP) in the next step.
GCarbon Team
Carbon accounting specialists
