Fastmarkets, a cross-commodity price reporting agency, announced on June 9, 2026, the launch of two new daily price assessments designed to address the lack of real-time visibility into carbon costs under the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). As CBAM transitions from a reporting requirement to a financial obligation, these tools aim to provide importers and exporters with the data needed to price, procure, and manage risk at the point of trade.

New CBAM Price Assessments

The new assessments, the CBAM Certificate Index and the CBAM Certificate Builder, provide the market with its first consistent daily view of expected CBAM certificate costs. Under the current framework, certificate costs are only confirmed after each reporting period—quarterly in 2026 and weekly from 2027—creating uncertainty for industries such as steel, aluminium, and cement. Fastmarkets' new tools are designed to close this gap by offering daily insights.

Key Features and Functionality

The CBAM Certificate Index provides a forward-looking assessment of certificate costs at the end of the reporting period. It combines auctioned European Union Allowance (EUA) values with spot and forward EUA prices. As the reporting period progresses and more auctions are completed, the Index increasingly reflects costs already locked in. In the first quarter of 2026, the index closely anticipated the final CBAM certificate price.

The CBAM Certificate Builder tracks the volume-weighted average cost of EUA auctions completed within the current reporting period. This offers a transparent picture of the costs already embedded in the final CBAM certificate price. Both assessments are published daily in €/tCO2e and are designed to converge with the official CBAM certificate price at the close of each period.

Strategic Implications for Market Participants

Sam Carew, Fastmarkets Senior Strategic Markets Editor, emphasized that bringing greater predictability to carbon costs is essential for companies to manage pricing, procurement, and compliance decisions. By integrating these assessments with the Fastmarkets CBAM cost calculator, customers can quantify, forecast, and actively manage their CBAM exposure using either EU default values or their own verified emissions data. This capability supports more confident decision-making as carbon becomes a core component of cross-border trade.