BICS pro-rating: how the 0%, 50% and 100% bands are calculated

Last updated 12 August 2026.

Your BICS exemption is not proportional to how much of your site's electricity goes into eligible production. It is banded, and one percentage point at a boundary is worth half the benefit.

The calculation method was published on 10 August. This page sets it out.

The bands

Proportion of grid electricity used for eligible manufacturing	Exemption
25% or less	0%
More than 25% but less than 50%	50%
50% or more	100%

Assessed separately for each manufacturing site, so a group can hold different bands at different sites. A site that makes only eligible products receives 100%, but still has to state that no ineligible production takes place and provide supporting evidence.

The five steps

Step 1. Total grid electricity at the site, over the most recent six consecutive months for which you have information, from within the twelve months before you apply. This comes off your supplier bill.

Electricity you generate yourself is excluded. Solar, CHP and on-site wind are not subject to the levies BICS relieves, so they sit outside the scheme entirely and come out of both sides of the calculation. A site consuming 1,000 MWh of which 300 MWh is behind-the-meter solar works from the 700 MWh of grid import only.

Step 2. Grid electricity used to manufacture eligible products, over the same six months. Production line plus eligible supporting activity.

Step 3. Divide step 2 by step 1 and multiply by 100.

Step 4. Read off the band from the table above.

Step 5. That band is the proportion of your grid electricity exempted from the BICS policy costs.

What counts as supporting activity

This is where most of the argument sits, and the list is broader than people expect.

Eligible supporting activities include machinery outside the main production line that is necessary for production, heating and ventilation, chillers and process cooling, compressed air, lighting, IT and control systems, material handling and on-site logistics including forklifts and robotics, testing, charging of electric vehicles used in production, repairs, interim storage, research and development, and corporate offices used for functions such as sales and HR.

Ineligible: machinery producing ineligible products, supporting activities used solely or predominantly for ineligible production, inter-site transport, and anything whose main purpose is not to support manufacturing on the site or which is used by others.

Where a supporting activity serves both eligible and ineligible production, the same thresholds apply to it: between 25 and 50 per cent of that activity's electricity supporting eligible production means half of it counts, and above 50 per cent means all of it counts. You can apply that test activity by activity or across supporting activities as a whole.

The government's worked example

A site consumes 1,000 MWh of grid electricity over six months. The production line uses 300 MWh, 30 per cent, on eligible products. Supporting activities use 200 MWh, 20 per cent, of which 30 per cent supports eligible manufacturing.

Because that 30 per cent falls between the 25 and 50 per cent thresholds, half of the supporting electricity counts: 100 MWh. Eligible electricity is therefore 300 plus 100, or 400 MWh. Against 1,000 MWh total, that is 40 per cent, which falls in the middle band and gives a 50 per cent exemption.

Note what happens at the margins. Had supporting activities been 51 per cent eligible rather than 30, all 200 MWh would have counted, giving 500 of 1,000 and a 100 per cent exemption. The same physical site, twice the relief, decided by one judgement about the offices and the lighting.

Evidence

If you have sub-metering or electricity monitoring covering the six-month period, you must use it, and you must declare that you have.

If you do not, you provide an estimate with a rationale: average electricity use by machine, production data as a proxy, or another approach. The guidance says underlying evidence is not required at application but may be sought in post-application checks. Records must be kept for six years.

The application asks for the band, a written rationale covering what eligible and ineligible production takes place and how the electricity was apportioned, and a declaration that the information is accurate.

There is no opportunity to amend an application after submission.

Shared meters

If you share a site but have your own MPAN, ignore the other business entirely. Your band is calculated on your own consumption and applied to your meter.

If you share the meter, there is an extra step. Establish the total consumption across the shared MPANs, then your own share of it, then your eligible proportion of your own share. Your band is then multiplied by your share of the meter. A business using 40 per cent of a meter and qualifying for a 50 per cent exemption receives a 20 per cent exemption on that meter.

Responsibility for evidencing this sits with you, not the landlord. Electricity for infrastructure or machinery shared with another party is not eligible at all.

If you already receive Supercharger relief

An EII certificate does not exclude you. What you cannot do is claim relief on the same electricity twice.

The BICS calculation runs on the portion of your grid consumption not already covered by the certificate. A meter with a 70 per cent Supercharger exemption that then qualifies for 100 per cent BICS receives BICS relief on the remaining 30 per cent.

Supercharger is worth considerably more per MWh than BICS, so switching is rarely attractive, and there is no direct transfer between schemes. But the residual is often where the unclaimed value sits, and it cannot be identified from the public EII list, which does not publish the exempt percentage or which activities the certificate covers.

What the government checker will not tell you

The free eligibility checker gives an initial indication of whether you qualify. It does not calculate your band, tell you what evidence will support it, model what a defensible reallocation is worth, or handle shared meters and Supercharger overlap.

Those are the questions that decide how much money you actually receive.

Already checked your eligibility? The harder question is what you can claim.

The BICS Readiness Audit picks up where the government checker stops: which entity and site should apply, which MPANs matter, which band the evidence actually supports, how any existing EII relief interacts, what it is worth and what evidence is missing. £500 fixed fee, two business days, credited in full against a full application.

See what is included →

Sources: British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme: guidance for applicants, published 10 August 2026, sections 4.2 to 4.9. Band thresholds and the £35 to £40 per MWh valuation also appear in the Government response of 16 April 2026. The worked example is the government's own, at section 4.6.