A regulatory term referring to the monetary amount paid in a third country, under a carbon emissions reduction scheme, in the form of a tax.
Carbon price is the non-EU carbon-cost concept that CBAM uses to decide whether a price already paid abroad can reduce the EU-side adjustment burden. The definition is intentionally broad enough to cover taxes, levies, fees, and allowance-based systems, so long as they are tied to greenhouse-gas emissions from production.
Regulation (EU) 2023/956 establishing a carbon border adjustment mechanism
the monetary amount paid in a third country, under a carbon emissions reduction scheme, in the form of a tax, levy or fee or in the form of emission allowances under a greenhouse gas emissions trading system, calculated on greenhouse gases covered by such a measure, and released during the production of goods;
Reference: Article 3, point 29
CBAM and product carbon footprint (under ESPR or the Battery Regulation) both quantify emissions associated with goods, but use different methodologies, scope boundaries, and regulatory purposes. CBAM focuses on production-process emissions at installation level; product carbon footprinting uses lifecycle thinking from raw material to end-of-life. A company may need to run both calculations for the same goods, and the numbers will differ — this is expected and not a compliance error.
This term matters when importers try to evidence that a carbon cost was genuinely paid in the country of origin and therefore should be credited against CBAM liability. In practice, that means linking the foreign pricing mechanism, the covered greenhouse gases, and the relevant production emissions to the imported goods in a way regulators can accept.
For Minespider, carbon price is an evidence-linking term. Its operational difficulty is not understanding the concept in the abstract, but proving that a foreign carbon-cost payment actually maps to the embedded emissions of the goods in question.