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Published: 04/06/2025
Efforts to improve embodied carbon savings in construction are slowly moving in the right direction. New initiatives encouraging decarbonisation in the sector include the launch of the world’s first low-carbon ratings system for cement and concrete(1), and the exploration of price premia for low-carbon metals listed by the London Metal Exchange (LME). The latter initiative would provide LME-branded metals with sustainability credentials, beyond their carbon footprint, that would help buyers to identify and invest in greener materials(2).
These developments are positive, but a significant step change across the sector cannot be achieved without high-quality carbon emissions data. In this regard, the reciprocal relationship between the Built Environment Carbon Database (BECD) and Circular Ecology’s the Inventory for Carbon and Energy (ICE) Database, hold the keys to a cleaner construction future.
Getting to know the BECD and ICE Database
The race to reduce Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide is reaching a bottleneck. Met Office intelligence forecast the highest rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide for over 2 million years in May 2025, with levels predicted to peak at a monthly mean value of approximately 429.6 parts per million(3).
Construction’s role in rising carbon emissions is well known. Despite new insight from the UN showing a fall in the sector’s energy intensity, construction remained responsible for more than one-third of global carbon emissions in 2024-25(4). Challenges such as cost pressures, skills shortages and a lack of technological investment are only making the decarbonisation progress harder.
However, a growing body of construction-specific carbon data promises to help change this narrative by making sustainable decision-making more accessible. The BECD has been at the forefront of this journey. Established through a sector partnership, the BECD enables users to report and retrieve carbon data on projects and products. It is a growing repository for Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and carbon assessments that is used for carbon benchmarking by industry professionals, and to augment other databases.
The ICE Database is a prime example of the latter. Developed 20 years ago by Dr Craig Jones as a research project at the University of Bath, the ICE Database uses data from the BECD’s product section to update its own repository of embodied carbon data for more than 200 building materials.
Now in its fourth iteration, the ICE Database enables organisations to make more informed decisions on materials procurement, at a time when regulatory and cross-sector efforts to assess embodied carbon are still up in the air. Where the BECD allows users to understand the embodied carbon of specific manufacturers’ products, the ICE Database shows the embodied carbon attached to generic materials, such as different types of steel. Together, the databases could bring huge carbon savings across the sector.
For example, the ICE Database can be used to compare the embodied carbon of insulation materials such as glass wool and polyurethane board. Where the production of one kilogram of glass wool accounts for 1.533 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (kgCO2e), the same amount of polyurethane board generates 4.532 kgCO2e(5).
Source: ICE Database Educational V4.0 – December 2024
While comparing insulation materials kilogram for kilogram is relatively crude, given they come in a wide range of densities, this comparison shows how the ICE Database can be used to prioritise greener materials and limit the embodied carbon of new construction projects where cost, design and regulatory factors allow.
There’s no decarbonisation without data pooling
Digitisation is accelerating opportunities to use the growing pool of construction-specific carbon data more readily. For instance, the launch of the BCIS Life Cycle Evaluator (LCE) in 2024 made it easier to review materials’ carbon footprints by removing the need for users to sift through large amounts of data. Fed by the BECD and the BCIS Cost and Carbon Materials Database (CCMD), LCE allows users to review the cost and carbon values of building components and thereby make changes at the design stage to reduce project emissions.
While alignment between LCE, the ICE Database and the BECD has increased the visibility of and ability to use carbon data, data cohesion in the sector is still in its infancy. Siloed working and competition are often to blame but there must be greater data pooling if construction is to decarbonise.
In the context of the ICE Database, access to a greater quantity and variety of material data points ensures the embodied carbon values given to materials are evermore representative. This serves embodied carbon benchmarking but also the reliability of data in construction’s carbon databases. The more factors influencing a material’s embodied carbon that analysts can assess, the more able they are to review how plausible data points are, as well as the final embodied carbon values of materials(6).
What’s next for construction’s carbon data?
Developments in the BECD and the ICE Database offer unparalleled opportunities to understand construction’s embodied carbon footprint at granular and project levels. LCE has also simplified the ability to improve whole life thinking with trusted data. However, there is still room for construction’s carbon data and whole life assessment tools to be used to their fullest potential.
First, there must be a bigger commitment to maintaining carbon data nationally. Several years of economic and geopolitical instability have compounded construction’s cost and resource pressures and pushed decarbonisation down sector and political agendas. However, with new housebuilding and infrastructure targets looming, now is the time for advancing how carbon is measured and managed in the built environment. Inefficient assets would be incredibly damaging for the UK’s decarbonisation progress so it’s crucial whole life emissions are factored into new projects long before building works take place. Government investment in the BECD would ensure its carbon data, and the ICE Database and LCE as a result, is updated regularly and can provide reliable insights into current materials emissions.
Equally, encouraging the use of tools that integrate cost estimation and carbon assessment capabilities will be key to decarbonisation. While many quantity surveyors and other sector professionals use cost estimation software to manage budgets, tools that support carbon reporting are scarcely touched. A carbon mandate and polices that promote the time benefits of using tools that integrate cost and carbon assessment capabilities would make carbon reporting seem a far easier duty to fulfil.
With construction at a cost-carbon crossroads, improving data cohesion, reliability, and scalability will be integral for establishing a visible trail of emissions throughout the supply chain. Progress made in the BECD, ICE Database, and whole life thinking, could make or break construction’s path to net zero.
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(1) GCCA – Global Low Carbon Ratings for Cement and Concrete – here
(2) LME – LME explores establishing price premia for sustainable metals – here
(3) Met Office – Mauna Loa carbon dioxide forecast for 2025 – here
(4) UN Environment Programme – Emissions from building sector stopped rising for the first time since 2020, UN finds – here
(5) ICE Database Educational V4.0 – Dec 2024
(6) Circular Ecology – Webinar Recap: ICE Insights: ICE Analytical Review Processes – here
