The definitive phase of CBAM has turned national electricity emission factors into a direct commercial cost for power exports from the Western Balkans to the European Union. At current certificate prices, that cost is high enough to exceed the visible wholesale price spread on every major carbon-intensive export corridor.
The average CBAM certificate price in Q2 2026 stood at €75.28/tCO₂, almost unchanged from €75.36/tCO₂ in Q1. Short-term volatility nevertheless declined, with daily auction prices ranging between €70.60 and €80.43/tCO₂, compared with a significantly wider range during the first quarter.
Applied to national default emission factors, the quarterly average certificate price translated into implied CBAM costs of €86.42/MWh for Bosnia and Herzegovina, €78.37/MWh for Serbia, €74.08/MWh for Kosovo, €73.70/MWh for Montenegro and €66.77/MWh for North Macedonia. Albania’s default emission factor was zero, leaving its implied CBAM cost at €0/MWh.
The comparison with wholesale price spreads is stark. Serbia’s average discount to Hungary was only around €12.9/MWh, far below the €78.37/MWh implied cost under its national default factor. Montenegro’s discount to Italy stood at approximately €27.2/MWh, compared with a default-factor charge of nearly €74/MWh. North Macedonia traded close to parity with Greece while carrying an implied CBAM cost of almost €67/MWh.
These figures show why simple day-ahead arbitrage is insufficient to support exports priced entirely under national default factors. Commercial transactions must instead rely on a combination of hourly price peaks, contractual positions, transit demand, expectations of regulatory changes or eligibility to use actual embedded-emission values.
The national-factor approach creates a particularly significant challenge for renewable power projects. A wind, hydropower or solar plant in Serbia or Montenegro may have operational emissions close to zero, yet its electricity can still be assessed using a national emission factor heavily influenced by lignite generation unless the requirements for using actual values are fully met. The generator is therefore commercially exposed to the carbon intensity of the wider national power system rather than that of its individual plant.
Albania illustrates the opposite case. Its predominantly hydropower-based system continued exporting to Greece despite a price spread of only €1.6/MWh. The zero default factor allowed Albanian electricity to remain competitive even when conventional wholesale arbitrage was almost absent. North Macedonia, by contrast, saw exports to Greece fall 78%, while Greek exports in the opposite direction increased by around 70%.
The result is an emerging two-tier regional electricity market. Low-carbon power systems can retain access to EU buyers even at relatively narrow price spreads, while carbon-intensive systems require exceptionally wide spreads, verifiable low-carbon generation or another commercial incentive to justify exports.
The impact extends beyond existing electricity trade. National emission factors are increasingly relevant to the projected revenues of new renewable projects, the value of cross-border PPAs and lenders’ willingness to finance merchant market exposure. A project whose base-case assumptions depend on access to Hungarian or Italian wholesale prices could face a material revenue downgrade if that access relies on a verification framework that is not yet fully operational.
CBAM’s electricity provisions therefore function increasingly like a border carbon charge on power whose origin and emissions cannot be adequately documented. The cost is not determined solely by the technology generating the electricity. It also depends on whether the contractual, metering and verification chain can demonstrate the identity and emissions profile of that generation throughout the export process.