Cement

Six CN codes from Chapters 25 and 38 are in scope: cement clinkers (CN 2523 10), Portland cement (CN 2523 21, 2523 29), aluminous cement (CN 2523 30), other hydraulic cements (CN 2523 90) and kaolinic clays (CN 2507 20) used as supplementary cementitious material. The list is the legal reference; the covered goods checker maps a code back to its scope status.

Roughly two thirds of CO2 from clinker production come from process emissions: calcination of calcium carbonate (CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2). The remainder is combustion of the kiln fuel mix (coal, petcoke, alternative fuels). Both are reported on the system boundary set in the embedded-emissions methodology. The clinker-to-cement ratio drives the per-tonne intensity of finished cements, which is why CEM II/III blends with slag, fly ash or limestone filler have materially lower embedded emissions than CEM I.

Cement is a finished good for CBAM purposes; clinker is a precursor of cement. When clinker is imported on its own, it is reported directly. When cement is imported, the embedded emissions of the clinker precursor are aggregated into the cement's embedded emissions using the installation's attribution methodology. Kaolinic clays calcined for use as supplementary cementitious material are in scope as a separate line.

The EU Commission publishes default values per CN sub-good, including separate direct and indirect components and a tapering schedule for the transition years (2026, 2027, 2028 onward). The values below are filtered to the cement sector from the official spreadsheet; the full dataset is on the default values explorer.