BICS is a UK government scheme cutting eligible manufacturers’ electricity bills by up to 25% from April 2027, via exemptions from Renewables Obligation, Feed-in Tariff and Capacity Market costs. To qualify, your business must hold an eligible SIC code and make products under eligible HS codes — both drawn from the lists the government has already published — and you must identify your eligibility within the 1 October – 30 November 2026 window.
1 Oct – 30 Nov 2026
April 2026
What BICS is — and why it exists
The British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme is the flagship electricity-cost measure of the UK’s Industrial Strategy. Its purpose is narrow and deliberate: British manufacturers pay some of the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world, and a large slice of that gap is not the raw cost of power but the policy levies loaded onto electricity bills. BICS removes several of those levies for eligible manufacturers, closing part of the competitiveness gap without touching the wholesale price of energy itself.
Concretely, BICS exempts eligible businesses from the indirect costs of three levies: the Renewables Obligation (RO), Feed-in Tariffs (FiT) and the Capacity Market (CM). Together these can account for a meaningful share of a manufacturer’s per-unit electricity cost, which is why removing them is worth up to a quarter of the bill for the most exposed sites. The scheme covers Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales — and does not extend to Northern Ireland, which sits under separate electricity market arrangements.
It is easy to confuse BICS with the older British Industry Supercharger, because both reduce levy costs and both use similar language. They are separate schemes with different thresholds and different depths of relief, and — importantly — you cannot hold both at once. More on that below.
Who qualifies — the SIC + HS "AND-rule"
This is where most competitor pages stop at “you need both codes.” BICS eligibility turns on a genuine AND-rule, and understanding it is the single most valuable thing a prospective applicant can do before the window opens. To qualify, a business must operate in an eligible manufacturing sector — identified by its Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code — and manufacture products that fall under eligible Harmonised System (HS) commodity codes. Passing one gate is not enough. Both must resolve to “eligible” for the same site, for the same activity.
The reason the AND-rule matters so much in practice is that the two classifications answer different questions. Your SIC code describes what your business, as an entity, is registered as doing. Your HS codes describe what physically leaves your site as finished product. A business can look squarely eligible on its SIC code and still fail because the specific products it makes don’t map to eligible HS headings — and, less often, the reverse. The scheme is built this way on purpose: it targets genuine manufacturing transformation, not merely membership of a broadly-defined sector.
A plastics processor with an eligible SIC code that only extrudes recycled mixed polymer may still fail the HS gate, because eligibility attaches to specific single-polymer primary forms — not to every product the SIC code implies. Sector fit does not guarantee product fit. The same pattern shows up in metals (primary ingot qualifies where sorted scrap may not), glass (cullet converted to primary glass qualifies where crushed aggregate does not) and food (processed output can qualify where pure packing or labelling does not). See the full AND-rule breakdown with pass/fail examples →
Because both gates are mandatory, the most common — and most expensive — mistake is to read an eligible SIC code as a green light and stop there. The AND-rule is not an either/or gate you can satisfy from one side; it is two locks on the same door. Not sure if your sector is on the list? Search the full eligible-sector list →
You don't need to calculate electricity intensity
A common misconception is that each applicant must prove its own electricity-intensity ratio. You don’t. The government has already done the intensity analysis — it used electricity intensity to decide which manufacturing sub-sectors are exposed enough to need support, and the result of that work is the published lists of eligible SIC and HS codes. If your codes are on those lists, the intensity test has, in effect, already been passed on your behalf.
That is what makes BICS more accessible than schemes that ask each business to evidence its own energy intensity: there is no GVA calculation to run and no intensity bar for you to clear. The question is simply binary — are your SIC and HS codes on the eligible lists? Everything in this guide flows from that single test, plus the site-level rules below for businesses whose sites mix eligible and non-eligible activity.
Don’t spend time modelling your electricity spend against turnover to guess whether you “qualify on intensity.” Instead, confirm your business’s SIC code and the HS codes of your actual products, and check them against the government’s eligible-code lists. That match — the SIC + HS AND-rule — is the eligibility test. Check your codes →
Site-level rules and mixed sites
BICS support is applied at site level, not at the level of the business as a whole, and it is weighted by how much of each site’s electricity actually feeds eligible manufacturing. Two rules dominate the outcome:
- The 25% floor. If less than 25% of a site’s total electricity use is attributable to eligible manufacturing activity, that site does not qualify for any exemption at all. The floor exists to keep the scheme focused on genuinely electricity-intensive industrial processes rather than incidental or ancillary consumption.
- Pro-rata banding. Above the floor, the exemption scales to the eligible proportion of the site’s consumption. A site where 80% of power feeds an eligible process lands a very different band from one at 30% — even if both clear the floor.
This is where the money is made or lost, because banding is fundamentally an evidence exercise. The scheme requires you to show which MPANs are associated with each manufacturing site and to substantiate the proportion of electricity consumed by eligible processes. Where a site mixes eligible manufacturing with offices, warehousing, or non-qualifying lines, the strength of your sub-metering and MPAN attribution determines whether you defend a high band or settle for a low one. Manufacturers routinely under-claim here simply because the supporting data wasn’t assembled carefully. Our mixed-site guidance covers the banding logic and the evidence that defends a higher band.
What BICS is worth
The headline figure is up to a 25% reduction in electricity bills for eligible sites, applied from April 2027. Industry estimates put the per-unit value in the region of £35–40/MWh for many users, though the figure that actually matters is your confirmed band applied to your real consumption — a large, high-consumption site and a smaller mixed site with the same SIC code can see very different pounds-and-pence outcomes.
There is also a one-off backdated payment. Because the exemptions themselves only switch on in 2027, the Government has committed to an additional payment on launch that effectively reflects the relief eligible businesses would have received had the scheme been live from April 2026. The mechanics of that payment are being finalised separately, but the headline point is important for cash-flow planning: the value of being confirmed eligible in the first window includes a retrospective element, not just future bill savings.
A site consuming 10 GWh a year, if confirmed at a band delivering around £37/MWh, would see an order-of-magnitude benefit in the region of £370,000 a year — before the backdated element. This is a worked illustration to show the shape of the numbers, not a quote: your actual figure depends entirely on your confirmed band, your consumption and your site mix. See worked examples by sector →
BICS vs the British Industry Supercharger
You cannot hold both. BICS and the British Industry Supercharger (BIS) overlap on some of the same levies, and where a business is eligible for both, DBT steers it toward the Supercharger because its relief is deeper — the Supercharger’s network-charge compensation rose to 90% of qualifying costs from April 2026. But the Supercharger’s eligible list is narrow and aimed at the most energy-intensive users, whereas BICS covers a much broader list of eligible manufacturing sectors and so reaches a far wider population. The trap is assuming BIS is automatically the better route without checking whether your codes are on its list at all — many manufacturers only appear on the BICS lists, and existing certificate holders should get a like-for-like comparison before recertifying.
Which route is worth more to you?
We model BICS and BIS side by side before you commit.
How to apply — and where we add the expert layer
For Year 1, the process is an eligibility identification window rather than a rolling application: businesses submit their information to DBT between 1 October and 30 November 2026, and DBT aims to confirm eligible businesses by 8 January 2027. Suppliers then have a set-up period before the exemptions themselves begin — RO and FiT from April 2027, the Capacity Market from October 2027. Approved certificates are expected to run for two years, with a mandatory annual declaration to reconfirm that you still meet the criteria.
Practically, a strong submission rests on three things: a defensible SIC and HS classification for your actual activity and products; a clean map of which MPANs sit at which manufacturing site; and credible evidence of the proportion of electricity each site devotes to eligible processes. None of this is exotic, but all of it is time-consuming to assemble correctly under a fixed deadline, and small errors in classification or metering attribution translate directly into a lower band — or a rejection.
This is the layer ENERGYbubble adds. We confirm the SIC/HS resolution against the official code lists, structure the metering and MPAN evidence to defend the highest supportable band, and assemble the pack in the form DBT will accept — all inside the window. Because we already sit across your procurement and metering data, we start from your real consumption rather than a blank form.
Scheme timeline & latest updates
BICS has moved quickly, and it is still moving — which is why this page carries a visible “last updated” date and is refreshed as the position changes.
- June 2025 — BICS foreshadowed in the Industrial Strategy as a new package of electricity-cost relief for manufacturers.
- 16 April 2026 — DBT publishes its consultation on regulatory changes and scheme delivery (closing 14 May 2026), setting out the RO, FiT and CM exemptions and the eligibility architecture.
- July 2026 — Government confirms it will proceed, crystallises the sector and product codes, and confirms the application window and delivery detail in a written statement to Parliament.
- Autumn 2026 — enabling legislation expected to be laid before Parliament.
- 1 Oct – 30 Nov 2026 — Year 1 eligibility identification window.
- 8 January 2027 — DBT’s target date to confirm eligible businesses.
- April 2027 — RO and FiT exemptions begin, plus the one-off payment backdating support to April 2026; the Capacity Market exemption follows in October 2027.
BICS: latest updates
We refresh this guide as the scheme develops — most recent first. This page is updated fortnightly until the window closes on 30 November 2026.
Get BICS updates before the window closes
We’ll email the important changes — eligibility, evidence rules and deadlines — as they land. No spam, unsubscribe any time.
Frequently asked questions
Can I claim BICS and the British Industry Supercharger together? +
When do savings actually reach my bill? +
What if only part of my site is eligible manufacturing? +
How much is BICS worth? +
My SIC code looks eligible — am I in? +
Does BICS apply in Northern Ireland? +
How long does a BICS certificate last? +
What evidence will I need to prepare? +
What happens if I miss the 30 November window?+
Could the level of support change later? +
Written and reviewed by ENERGYbubble’s procurement and risk specialists — 25+ years across wholesale energy trading, non-commodity cost optimisation and industrial relief schemes including EII, CCAs and BICS. [Replace with a named author + photo before publishing — named experts strengthen E-E-A-T.]
Primary sources: DBT written statement to Parliament (8 Jul 2026); BICS consultation on regulatory changes and scheme delivery (16 Apr 2026, gov.uk). Figures — including the ~£35–40/MWh and ~10,000-business estimates — are indicative and subject to final legislation laid in autumn 2026. Confirm all figures against current DBT guidance before publishing.