ICE Database – Frequently Asked Questions

The ICE database originally contained embodied energy and embodied carbon factors. However, since 2019 embodied energy factors are no longer included. The data in the wider literature, which the ICE database relies upon, generally no longer reports the embodied energy of construction products. Instead, embodied carbon has become the main metric.  

ICE contains the embodied carbon data for a wide range of different materials, from concrete, plastics, metals and much more. 

You can access the ICE Database by submitting a download form on this page. This will then take you to a download link for the ICE Database. 

Yes, the ICE Database is a free resource. There are no plans to change this. Being a free resource has been an important part of the success of the ICE Database. 

There are two versions, both having different permitted usage: 

Educational use includes self-learning, teaching (schools, colleagues, universities…etc), academic research projects (e.g. University research) and use in free training courses.  

Since ICE V4 onwards, users intending to use any part of the ICE Database for non-educational commercial purposes need to register for permission to use the data. Registration is free with no plans to change this. 

Examples include but aren’t limited to, consultancy projects, non-academic research and development projects, software, tools, platforms, …etc.

Any organisations wishing to use the ICE Database for non-educational purposes are required to register for permission to use the data. Registration is valid for 12 months.  

Registration covers one organisation in one country of operations.  

Multi-national organisations are required to register for each country they operate within.  

For example, if a company has presence in the UK and USA, one representative local to the UK would complete a registration for the UK operations, and a second representative local to the USA would complete a registration for the companies USA operations.  

Registration doesn’t cover territories larger than one country, e.g. it doesn’t cover regions, contents or any other groups of countries. 

Registration is made on the ICE download form, accessible on the main ICE Database webpage.

Registration for permission to use the ICE Database for non-educational use lasts a period of 12 months. After which it expires. Re-registration may be made once the period has elapsed. 

The ICE Educational version is intended to show only the key information in ICE and is intended for download by typical users who wish to access material embodied carbon information for personal or educational use. 

The Advanced version of ICE remains free, and offers deeper data insights, on the material profiles, and also includes a copy of the machine-readable version of ICE. This version is aimed at users/organisations that wish to use the ICE Database for more than just educational purposes. For example, commercial application, in software, tools, platforms…etc.

You may circulate the ICE Database to internal colleges within your organisation. However, you may not provide the database in full or part to external users. External users may download the database for free from the ICE Database download page.

n order to use the data in any software or tool users are required to register for permission to use. Registration is free and covered in the above guidance. Users shall also provide to us details of the software and tool, even if it is only available internally. This is an importance process of increasing the understanding of where the ICE database is used, and how we can keep the tool developers up to date with product updates and improvements.  

The ICE Database is a material-focused database that draws mainly from Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), and high quality Life Cycle Assessments (LCA). Therefore the background data does contain individual product data (from specific manufacturers), but the published ICE database is more generic data, so not brand specific.  

The ICE Database sources data from a variety of online freely accessible Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) repositories such as the BECD Database. We also use sector-average EPDs in some cases, and high quality Life Cycle Assessments. All references for the data used in ICE are available in the dataset. 

There are many ways in which you can contribute to support the continued maintenance, update and development of the ICE Database. This includes direct financial contributions for research, access to material embodied carbon data or through sharing the ICE Database in your network. You can visit our support us page to find out more, or contact us directly.

ICE is a free resource that requires further funding to update. Over the last 15 years funding has been limited and we hope to change this by the introduction of a supporter system, to raise the necessary funds for database maintenance and updates. The next update is therefore dependent upon the success of the fund raising. Although we endeavour to keep the ICE Database updated more regularly in future. 

To date, the ICE Database has been downloaded by well over 50,000 professionals globally and is referenced in countless reports, journals, books, lectures, and carbon footprint calculators.  

You can stay updated on future ICE Database developments by subscribing to our Newsletter here.

We often run webinars alongside our ICE developments that discuss upcoming changes to the database. You can view an example of this for a v4.0 update here.