What makes a carbon price qualify for UK CBAM relief?
It must meet all of HMRC's criteria: run by or for a government or supra-national body that controls the revenue, mandatory by law for installations making CBAM goods, with public rules, scope and headline price, and a cost on emissions, priced directly or through IPCC, IEA or UNFCCC factors. Fuel duties do not qualify.
All of these must be true
- Run by, or on behalf of, a government (including a state or region) or a supra-national body such as the European Union.
- That government or body controls how the revenue is used.
- The law requires installations making or processing CBAM goods to take part, including where it applies only above an emissions threshold.
- The rules, scope and headline carbon price are public.
- Participants face a cost for their emissions, priced per tonne of CO2e or indirectly on fossil fuel use, with factors from or based on IPCC, IEA or UNFCCC methods.
What does not qualify
- Carbon prices that are not a carbon tax, an emissions trading scheme or a price on imported goods' embodied emissions.
- Prices that do not charge for emissions during production of the goods.
- Schemes run by multilateral institutions rather than a government.
- Voluntary schemes, even if run by a government.
- Fuel duties charged per litre, kilogram or unit of fuel rather than per tonne of emissions.
Voluntary joiners
HMRC says an installation below a mandatory threshold may still qualify for relief if it has voluntarily joined a qualifying scheme.
Then the paperwork
A qualifying scheme alone gives no relief. The importer also needs a carbon pricing verification form from your plant.
What Senseible does here
Senseible does not decide whether a levy qualifies or calculate relief. It builds the emissions figure from your invoices that relief is applied to. We build the figure from your records and check every figure in-house; for the UK it must then be verified by a verifier accredited for UK CBAM. Have your own verifier? Send it to them.
Sources: HMRC, Check if your goods have been subject to a qualifying carbon pricing scheme (updated 28 August 2026), HMRC, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM): Policy summary (updated 2 November 2026)
Last reviewed 2026-11-03.