Reference Data

Cost indices & escalation series

Overview

The Chemical Engineering Plant Cost Index (CEPCI) annual-average series — the standard index for escalating chemical-process equipment and plant costs from their base year to the analysis year. This is a lookup page: it holds the index values and the one-line escalation ratio that applies them; which dated cost to anchor to is a reference-class judgment, and the cost build it feeds on capex.

Data

How the index is applied. CEPCI is dimensionless (base period 1957–1959 = 100). To bring a cost from base year A to year B, scale by the ratio of the two years’ indices:

cost in year B = cost in year A × (CEPCI_B ÷ CEPCI_A)

CEPCI tracks US process-plant construction cost as a weighted composite of equipment, construction labor, buildings, and engineering/supervision.

Annual-average CEPCI (base 1957–59 = 100) — last 10 years; copy or download the full 1963–2024 series with the buttons, expand it under Show more, or read it off the chart above:

⚠ 2024 = 798.8 is the June 2024 monthly value (the last freely published), used here as the 2024 annual proxy — not a confirmed full-year average. No 2025 or 2026 value is freely published (see caveats).

Recent base-year index values used by sibling datasets (the CEPCI each named source normalizes to — escalate from these): Sinnott & Towler 2020 = 509.7 · Capcost 2017 = 542 · Seider et al. 2016 = 567 (≈ the 2017 567.5 level). These map to the four sources collated in CAPEX References.

Applicability & caveats

• Basis: US, USD, dimensionless index, base 1957–59 = 100. The ratio escalates a cost level; it carries no currency conversion and no regional (Gulf Coast vs. ex-US) adjustment. Confirm currency/region before mixing with non-US figures.
• Escalation is a ratio of the same index. Both years must use CEPCI — never mix CEPCI with another index (Marshall & Swift, Nelson–Farrar, GDP/PPI deflators) in one ratio. CEPCI is the right index for process-plant equipment; it is not a general inflation index.
• Use over short spans. Practitioners caution against escalating more than ~5 years — index methodology, technology, and construction practice drift, so a 1970s→2020s ratio is unreliable. The deeper history is for reference, not long escalation.
• 2024 is a June monthly proxy; 2025–2026 are not freely available. The publisher moved CEPCI behind paid access in Sep 2024, so any current-year escalation target past mid-2024 is an estimate (the CAPEX References calculator carries working estimates of ~812 for 2025 and ~815 for 2026).
• Escalation does not improve accuracy class. An escalated old cost is still a FEL-1/2, ±30% estimate at best; the ratio only removes the time-trend, not the underlying scatter.

Sources & provenance

Annual-average CEPCI, base 1957–59 = 100, compiled by the TEA Commons team. 2001–2024 are cross-confirmed value-for-value against the Towering Skills summary; pre-2001 comes from the same sources. All retrieved 2026-06-09.

• Towering Skills — cost-index summary; confirms the 2001–2024 values, the base period, the publisher, and the Sep-2024 paywall. https://toweringskills.com/financial-analysis/cost-indices/
• Chemical Engineering (chemengonline.com) — original publisher (Access Intelligence LLC); CEPCI moved to paid access (~$699/yr) in Sep 2024, so post-mid-2024 values aren’t freely published. https://www.chemengonline.com/Assets/File/CEPCI_2002.pdf
• University of Manchester (GCED) — teaching mirror of the series. https://www.training.itservices.manchester.ac.uk/public/gced/CEPCI.html?reactors/CEPCI/index.html