2023-10-05 10:56:05
Dalready four days of testing the European Union’s carbon tax through the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Indeed, since Sunday October 1, 2023, the EU has started testing its carbon tax at the borders. That is to say that from this date until the end of December 2025, companies which import into the European Union “carbon-intensive goods” from the iron and steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizers and electricity, “virtually” pay a tax on the CO2 emitted during their manufacture abroad.
For the moment, there is no financial payment from European importing companies. Instead of payments which should be effective from January 2026, the latter are making declarations.
A declarative approach
More concretely, let’s take the case of an exporter of Chinese steel or Turkish cement to the EU. Both are now obliged to declare emissions linked to their production process. If they exceed the European standard, the company concerned will have to acquire an emission certificate at the price of CO2 in the European Union. If a carbon market exists in the country of production, but with a lower carbon price than in Europe, as is currently the case in China and in certain American states, the exporter will pay the difference.
The MACF “puts on an equal footing the fact of producing steel within the European Union” or outside, then importing it, explained the EU, which welcomes its “contagious” effect. , because it will “encourage its commercial partners”, including certain Moroccan companies, to strengthen their climate action.
In short, this tax might bring the European Union around “3 billion euros in 2030, and undoubtedly more following”, as it comes into force, the EU hopes. Indeed, in the long term, it should be extended to other products. In any case, its main objective is to maintain fair conditions of competition between European manufacturers of these products – already subject to the European carbon market – and others, in the face of the disappearance of free quotas in Europe.
Morocco directly concerned
Note that the carbon tax at borders is not unanimous among European industrialists and entrepreneurs. For good reason, some of them have difficulty accepting the too sudden disappearance of the rights to pollute which were until then freely distributed to them, they also fear the risk of a distortion of competitiveness for downstream sectors, and denounce the lack of export protection. Some even evoke a disaster scenario by declaring: “If we do not apply it intelligently, we will be in danger. It will transform into a tool of massive deindustrialization.”
Morocco, 65% of whose exports go to the European market, is directly challenged. To avoid losing its market share, the authorities are actively preparing to ensure that Morocco is one of the countries that will benefit from the MACF when it comes into effect in 2026. It is for this purpose that a major operation to generalize carbon footprints was launched by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in partnership with the Ministry of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development, the Mohammed VI Foundation for the Environment, the Moroccan Agency for energy efficiency (AMEE) and the General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises (CGEM).
The operation consists in particular of supporting industrial companies in general, and those exporting to the EU in particular, to carry out their carbon footprint. That is to say, to quantify the gas emissions (GHG) generated by their activities of production of goods or services (consumables, energy consumption, transport, waste, etc.).
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