Ofgem has issued URE Energy with a final order, meaning the supplier must pay more than £200,000 in renewables obligation (RO) payments by 31 March.
In total the supplier owes the regulator £209,013.78 for the obligation period of 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018.
Ofgem invited representations or objections in relation to the final order, which was proposed on 13 February, to be made by 6 March.
Big six supplier SSE made representations in support of the proposal, with the large supplier sharing the regulator’s concern that compliant suppliers are penalised by shortfalls arising from non-compliant suppliers, such as URE.
Following this URE has until 5pm on 31 March to make the payment and must notify Ofgem it has done so via email.
An “unprecedented” 34 suppliers failed to meet their full obligations by the 1 September deadline last year, which resulted in a combined shortfall of £102.9 million in the England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland buy-out funds (up from £18.7 million in 2017). This works out as an average of £3.02 million per supplier.
In November, the regulator announced a mutualisation process would be triggered for the first time ever after the outstanding payments following the final deadline exceeded a threshold known as the relevant shortfall.
The level of the shortfall was confirmed at £58.6 million.
A number of suppliers named as owing RO payments beyond the 31 October late payment deadline have ceased trading.
These include: Iresa, Spark, Extra, Future Energy, Gen4U, One Select, Snowdrop and Economy Energy.