Ofgem will revoke URE Energy’s electricity and gas supply licences after the supplier failed to meet its Renewables Obligation (RO) payments for the 2017-18 period.
Under the RO scheme suppliers who do not source the required proportion of electricity from renewable sources have to pay into a buy-out fund administered by Ofgem.
For 2018-2019, suppliers have until 31 August 2019 to meet their obligation or can pay the amount owed plus interest within the late payment window until 31 October 2019.
URE failed to meet both the 1 September payment deadline and the 31 October late payment deadline last year.
The energy regulator then ordered the supplier to deliver £209,013.78 in outstanding payments by 31 March this year.
Manchester-based Eversmart was also given until that date to pay £367,149.82, which it achieved.
URE shed all of its customers in April this year and some industry experts believed it was “highly likely” to have ceased trading in December last year.
Last year an “unprecedented” 34 suppliers failed to meet their full Renewables Obligation (RO) by the 1 September deadline, 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, Snowdrop, Economy Energy and Brilliant Energy.
Since January 2018, 16 energy suppliers have exited the market.
Five suppliers have already exited the market this year – Economy Energy, Our Power, Brilliant Energy, Cardiff Energy Supply and Solarplicity.