Carbon intensive goods

Carbon intensive goods are products that have a high carbon footprint and one that is considered hard to abate or somewhat inherent in their production. Some of the most common of these are key construction materials such as concrete, steel and aluminium but also fertilisers and hydrogen referred to as energy intensive industries.

There are however a number of schemes that help to try to adjust the intensity of using such materials either through adaptations in the production processes, such as with cement and concrete, the introduction of greater recycled content such as with aluminium or encouraging reuse such as with steel.

The carbon intensity as well as high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relate to standard production, transport, and manufacture and can be measured in tCO2e per euro/dollar or pound of value or tCO2e per ton of output or material produced. A Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) measures the total greenhouse gas emissions generated throughout a product's entire life cycle, expressed in CO2e including emissions from raw material extraction, production, distribution, usage, and disposal. Because of the carbon intensity of these industries are essentially direct emissions, the UK,and other counties apply taxes through carbon pricing under the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

However because some of these industries continue to be essentially key to for example construction and to avoid the industries moving elsewhere to reduce carbon taxes and create an increase in imported less regulated goods to the UK a mechanism called the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will be introduced. CBAM aims to ensure that highly traded, carbon intensive goods which are imported into the UK face a comparable carbon price to that paid by manufacturers producing the same goods in the UK.

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