Steel, aluminum, fertilizer, cement, hydrogen, electricity. These are the six goods covered by the European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in 2026. Domestic exporters whose products appear on this list must, starting this year, calculate the carbon emissions of their products under the CBAM emissions calculation methodology, have them verified, and submit them to EU importers.
The government published a practical manual for the definitive period on March 30, 2026, and from that same day until April 26 it is recruiting companies to take part in consultation support. What companies standing at the threshold of the system can rely on right now are the practical manual and on-site consultations.
CBAM did not appear overnight. The transitional period ran from October 2023 to December 2025, and the definitive period is understood to take effect from January 2026. The decisive difference between the two periods is the weight of the obligation. During the transitional period, what companies had to do went only as far as reporting their greenhouse gas emissions.
With the opening of the definitive period, an obligation to purchase CBAM certificates from 2027 is added to this. Yet the wording differs even within government materials as to who actually bears this obligation. Some places describe it as a response burden on Korean exporters, while others state that EU importers bear a burden corresponding to the emissions. Either way, the fact that it is domestic companies that must calculate emissions accurately and hand them over does not change.
The newly released "Practical Manual for the Definitive Period of the European Union Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism - Calculation of Specific Embedded Emissions and Calculation of CBAM Certificate Quantities" targets that calculation work. It reflects the changes to the system under the EU implementing regulation adopted in December 2025, and along with an explanation of the key changes in the definitive period, it includes calculation examples for processed steel supply chains. The inclusion of examples stands out.
In emissions calculation, the point where practitioners get stuck most often is the text of the rules itself less than how to apply that text to their own processes. The manual was pursued jointly by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the Korea Customs Service and other relevant ministries together with the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology.
There are gaps that documents alone cannot fill. The Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment will support the entire CBAM implementation process, including emissions calculation and reporting, through visits to company sites and one-on-one consultations. The recruitment period for companies to join the "2026 EU CBAM Response Corporate Consultation Support" runs from March 30 to April 26, with applications and inquiries handled by the EU CBAM Help Desk (1551-3213, extension 1).
The target number of companies to be recruited, the selection criteria, the size of the project budget and the implementing agency could not be confirmed in publicly available materials. The same goes for whether the manual's publication and the consultation support were planned as a single package.
If the system is read only as a European trade barrier, the response will always be late. Calculating emissions also means measuring and looking at where energy is leaking in one's own processes for the first time. Companies with the capacity to calculate find room for reductions while responding to the regulation.
Conversely, companies without a calculation system in place may have to accept unfavorable default values even if their actual emissions are low. A gap in preparation carries over directly into a gap in costs.
The horizon does not stop at the six goods. From 2028, coverage is set to expand to downstream products of steel and aluminum, that is, industrial machinery, vehicles and home appliances. This means that many mid-sized and small manufacturers who now consider themselves unrelated to CBAM will be asked for the same documents two years from now. The starting lines of companies that set up a calculation system today and those that do not will have widened greatly by then.
So what can be done today is unexpectedly simple. It is to check once, on a product basis, whether the products your company ships to the EU fall within the six goods, or whether they fall under the 2028 expansion. If they do, you can ask the Help Desk (1551-3213, extension 1) before April 26 about applying for consultation.
The system has taken effect, but it is not too late to start preparing. There is a point that has yet to be answered. Will this support end as a one-off prescription for the first year, or will it remain as a standing system that carries through to the downstream expansion
