85 Renewable Energy CICs in One Quarter — And They Say We Can't Move Fast

Eighty-five CICs registered in a single quarter. All of them in renewable energy. All of them racing to qualify for the Feed-in Tariff before the government changed the rules.

That’s not a bureaucratic response to a policy announcement. That’s a movement.

The Feed-in Tariff dash is one of those moments that tells you more about the CIC model than any amount of policy analysis ever could. When the government created an incentive structure that made community renewable energy viable, communities didn’t spend years forming working groups, commissioning feasibility studies, and applying for development grants. They incorporated CICs. Quickly. Pragmatically. At scale.

Eighty-five in three months is the kind of registration rate that usually takes a year across all sectors. And it happened because the conditions were right: a clear financial incentive, a community need, and a legal structure that could be operationalised fast enough to seize the opportunity.

This is the CIC model at its best. Not as a theoretical construct debated in conference halls, but as a practical tool that communities reach for when they need to get something done. The renewable energy sector understood something that policymakers have been slow to grasp: CICs aren’t just social enterprises. They’re infrastructure for community action.

The Feed-in Tariff itself was a victim of its own success, of course. The government capped it, then cut it, because the take-up was higher than expected. That’s a story for another day. But the 85 CICs that registered in that quarter are still out there, generating renewable energy, generating community income, and proving that when you align policy with the CIC structure, remarkable things happen.

Now if only we could replicate that across social care, housing, and community transport.