The increase in the CBAM certificate price to €82.32/tCO₂ reinforces a structural shift that began with the start of definitive CBAM implementation in January.
EU ETS carbon pricing is increasingly feeding directly into electricity trading economics across the Western Balkans.
For coal-intensive markets, the additional carbon cost creates a barrier to exports into the EU. For Albania, it strengthens the commercial value of an already low-carbon generation mix. For renewable producers in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia, it increases the value of demonstrating plant-specific emissions through reliable traceability and verification.
Carbon Becomes a Moving Component of Power Spreads
The impact is set to become more dynamic from 2027, when CBAM certificate prices will shift from quarterly to weekly calculations.
Carbon costs will then become another continuously changing component of cross-border electricity spreads, alongside wholesale power prices, transmission capacity and balancing costs.
The dividing line for Western Balkan electricity trade is therefore becoming increasingly clear: the lowest-priced electricity will not necessarily be the electricity that can be exported to the EU profitably.
Increasingly, the more valuable megawatt-hour may be the one whose low emissions can be demonstrated and verified.
The regional comparison illustrates the scale of the change. The same €82.32/tCO₂ carbon price produces indicative CBAM costs ranging from €0/MWh in Albania to about €94.50/MWh in Bosnia and Herzegovina, making carbon exposure itself one of the largest potential cross-market differentials in Western Balkan electricity trading.
