The paper deploys a regional actor perspective to detect policy enablers of and barriers to the uptake of civic energy. In common with other forms of regional, decentralized energy, the civic energy concept not only challenges historical energy business models but changes the energy agenda to prioritize community development and climate issues. Energy policy needs to react by shifting from purely market regulations to the promotion of shared community energy solutions. Both current energy structures and mainstream policy are unsuited to deliver on widely recognized energy transition and sustainable development goals. Switching from a centralized to a decentralized energy mode is viewed as a major re-structuring of a socio-technical regime. In a series of expert interviews, two disruptive policy approaches, creative destruction and experimentation, are analysed as to whether they can contribute to overcoming path dependency and carbon lock-in. Over and above dismantling existing administrative and legislative restrictions on civic energy uptake, experimentation is needed to develop new community partnerships that can host civic energy initiatives and mobilize untapped local energy resources. Whereas the fossil versus renewable energy policy debate seems to have been won, the shift from centralized to decentralized systems threatens existing power structures and remains highly contentious.