Your EU customer asks for embedded-emissions data, with a date attached: the CBAM definitive period began on 1 January 2026. Importers bringing more than 50 tonnes a year of iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, electricity or hydrogen into the EU need authorised-declarant status and must surrender certificates. The question lands on your desk: what is your product's embedded emission?
The checklist
- Your product groups and customs codes. No calculation starts before you know which product ships under which code.
- Facility and activity data. Fuel, electricity, raw materials: from the measurement point into the record, never estimated in.
- Emission factors and the GWP set, with versions. If the version is not written down, next year's team cannot reproduce the figure.
- Supplier data, collected — not attached. Scope 3 data stops travelling as email attachments; whose data arrived and when is on the record.
- A record ready for verification. An audit opens the calculation with its evidence attached, not a rebuilt spreadsheet.
- Import records. Quantities in the declaration period, matched to product groups.
Where the spreadsheet stops
The spreadsheet built with a consultant is produced once. A year later nobody can reproduce it: which factor version was used, whose data went in and who changed it were never recorded.
We build this calculation on UpcyCarbon: each emission links to an activity record, a factor and a GWP set, and edits and exports are both recorded with who made them and when. When the work ends you keep a calculation running in your own system, not a PDF.
