CBAM is now live. The exporters supplying their own emissions data are the ones staying competitive.
Book a 30-minute callThe India-inbound angle here isn't about European companies selling into India's domestic metals market, it's about European industrial partners co-investing in lower-carbon production capacity inside India. As CBAM pushes Indian steel and aluminium producers toward verified, facility-level emissions data, European technology providers in electric arc furnace conversion, renewable power integration and emissions monitoring have a genuine opening to partner directly with Indian producers who need to prove their numbers, not just improve them.
For Indian steel and aluminium exporters, CBAM has already reshaped the numbers. Exports to the EU fell 24.4 percent in FY25, even before the mechanism's definitive phase began on 1 January 2026, and the metals sector carries the largest share of India's total CBAM exposure, north of €6 billion a year. The gap between India's average steel emissions intensity and the EU's is the direct driver of the extra cost, and exporters who supply their own verified plant-level data consistently pay less than those assessed against the EU's default values, which run higher than most real Indian production numbers.
Structural steel, pipes, wire rods and TMT bars fall under mandatory BIS certification (IS 2062, IS 1239, IS 1786) for domestic sale, separate from and unrelated to CBAM, which only concerns exports leaving India.
CBAM's definitive phase began 1 January 2026. EU importers must now purchase CBAM certificates tied to the embedded emissions in every covered shipment, iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen and electricity. Without facility-level emissions data supplied by the Indian exporter, the EU applies default values, which the available analysis puts meaningfully above most actual Indian production emissions, inflating the certificate cost further.