IC+ Frequently Asked Questions

IC+ is a new commercial embodied carbon database from Circular Ecology.

It is being developed to provide more up-to-date, detailed, and regularly maintained embodied carbon data for professional applications such as carbon assessments, reporting, tools, software, and platforms.

IC+ builds upon over 20 years of experience behind the ICE Database and is intended to support a wider range of commercial applications.

The expectations placed on embodied carbon data have increased significantly over the past 20 years.

Maintaining and updating the ICE Database to modern standards requires substantial ongoing resources, access to background datasets, and regular development.

To support the long-term maintenance and development of embodied carbon data, Circular Ecology has introduced a new freemium model, comprising 2 separate products:

• ICE Database Educational (free educational resource)
• IC+ (more up-to-date, commercial database)

ICE Database Educational

• Free to download
• Educational use only
• Supports learning, teaching, training courses, and student exercises
• Not permitted for commercial use
• Not permitted in tools, software, platforms, or calculations, unless for 100% non-commercial learning and teaching only

IC+

• Commercially licensed
• Designed for professional and commercial applications
• Suitable for use in calculations, reporting, tools, software, and platforms
• Intended to be updated more frequently
• Will contain newer and expanded datasets

Our target is to release IC+ in September 2026.

Further information will be available soon.

Initial indicative quotations are currently being issued.

If you would like an indicative quote based on your intended use case, please complete the IC+ expression of interest survey at the bottom of this page.

Yes. The pricing structure provides significant economies of scale as the number of licensed users increases.

Please contact us if you expect particularly large user volumes.

Yes. Discounts are available for:

• Existing Circular Ecology clients
• Organisations that supported the ICE Database Supporter System
• Users who purchased the ICE Database Machine Readable version
• Charities

An IC+ licence can be configured to cover a range of professional and commercial uses, including:

• Internal calculations, assessments, and reporting
• Consultancy and client work
• Internal spreadsheets, dashboards, and tools
• External-facing software and platforms
• Product carbon footprints
• Research and analysis
• API integration

The permitted users, organisations, tools, territories, and API use will be recorded in the applicable Commercial Data Licence Agreement.

Yes, with an active and valid licence only.

IC+ has been developed specifically to support these types of applications, subject to an appropriate licence. Licences for tools, software, platforms, databases, and similar resources will only apply to the named product/s covered by the licence.

IC+ Data must not be uploaded to publicly accessible or unauthenticated third-party platforms.

Where a third-party platform uses authenticated access, the platform owner must hold a suitable IC+ licence covering the integration, storage and access arrangements.

A customer’s own licence does not automatically permit IC+ Data to be hosted within software or infrastructure owned by another organisation. Please contact us before proceeding with this type of integration.

Not necessarily. We will consider the nature, purpose, scope and deployment of the resource when assessing the number of Tools requiring licence coverage.

Yes, only with written permission from Circular Ecology and an active and valid licence that allows use in an API.

Additional terms may apply depending on the nature of the API and how end users access the data. Access to end users shall only be granted for users with a suitable licence.

Users who can access IC+ Data, or information from which the underlying IC+ factors can reasonably be determined, must be covered under an appropriate IC+ licence.

Users who receive only protected, project-specific results and cannot access or determine the underlying IC+ Data will not normally require End User coverage.

We recognise that some organisations may not know their final user numbers, particularly when launching new tools or entering new markets.

We recommend purchasing the estimated number of licences that best reflects your anticipated level of usage over the 12-month licensing period. Additional licences may be purchased if usage increases during the licence period.

Contact us before adding users, organisations, Tools, API use, territories or new forms of external access. The existing licence may need to be updated.

Project-specific results, reports and assessments can generally be shared with clients where the underlying IC+ Data cannot be accessed or determined.

If a client receives IC+ factors, an editable spreadsheet containing factors, a reusable Tool, or information from which factors can reasonably be identified or back-calculated, the relevant users must be covered under an appropriate licence.

Public distribution of IC+ emission factors or underlying IC+ Data is not permitted.

IC+ emission factors and underlying IC+ Data must not be made publicly available. Results and Project-Specific Outputs may be published where they do not expose the factors or allow them to be reconstructed or back-calculated.

Maintaining compatibility with existing systems is an important consideration for the development of IC+. IC+ will contain new UUIDs, which will be mapped to the ICE Database UUIDs.

Yes. The ICE Database has historically been widely used internationally, but users should assess whether the data is appropriate for their intended application and geographical context.

Separate legal entities are not automatically covered by another organisation’s licence. Each entity wishing to access or use IC+ should complete the IC+ registration form so that the appropriate arrangement can be assessed.

Documentation, guidance, webinars, and supporting materials are planned and will be made available following launch. For now, please see our latest ICE Database Update Webinar recording here.

An End User is an individual who can access or use IC+ Data, either directly or through a spreadsheet, Tool, platform, dashboard, model, workflow, API or other resource. This includes people who can see IC+ emission factors or access information from which those factors could reasonably be identified, inferred, reconstructed, extracted or back-calculated.

Someone receiving only protected, project-specific results, without access to the underlying IC+ Data, will not normally count as an End User.

Access is the determining factor, rather than how frequently someone uses the data.

Read the End User Licence Agreement for the full definition.

No. Standard IC+ licences are time-limited and do not renew automatically. Continued access requires an agreed renewal before the current licence period expires.

The ICE Database Educational is intended to continue the educational legacy of the ICE Database.

However, maintaining and developing embodied carbon data to modern expectations requires substantial ongoing investment and resources.

IC+ has been developed to provide a sustainable route for maintaining and expanding the data whilst continuing to make ICE available as a free educational resource.

Please visit the ICE Database Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page for more information.