Renewable Obligation: Number of ROCs presented towards 2016/17 UK obligation

Data

Publication date

Scheme name

RO

Total obligation: 100,748,885 ROCs

The Renewables Obligation (RO) requires licensed electricity suppliers to source a proportion of the electricity they supply to UK customers from renewable sources. We set suppliers’ obligations as a number of Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs). The obligation levels for 2016/17, announced by the then Department of Energy and Climate Change (now BEIS) in September 2015, are:

  • 0.348 ROCs per MWh of electricity supplied to customers in England, Wales and Scotland
  • 0.142 ROCs per MWh of electricity supplied to customers in Northern Ireland

Using these obligation levels and multiplying by the total electricity supplied (MWh) to UK customers during this obligation period (1 April 2016 – 31 March 2017), the total obligation for 2016/17 is 100,748,885 ROCs. Split out for each obligation this is:

  • 90,507,092 ROCs in England and Wales
  • 9,137,807 ROCs in Scotland
  • 1,103,986 ROCs in Northern Ireland

Suppliers were able to meet their obligations for 2016/17 by 1 September 2017 (31 August for buy-out payments) by:

  • Presenting ROCs to us
  • Making a buy-out payment of £44.77 per ROC
  • Using a combination of ROCs and a buy-out payment.

Any suppliers who did not meet their obligations in full by 1 September, need to make a late payment by 31 October.

We have recently redistributed the Renewables Obligation (RO) buy-out fund for 2016/17. Details of the obligations and total payments for each RO scheme are shown in the Table 1 below.

Table 1

Obligation

Total Obligation (ROCs)

ROCs presented by suppliers

Percentage of obligation met by ROCs

Buy-out payments made by suppliers (rounded to nearest pound)

 Buy-out redistributed

England & Wales (RO)

90,507,092

80,610,115

89.1%

£420,464,817

 £416,356,635

Scotland (ROS)

9,137,807

8,596,043

94.1%

£21,416,491

 £21,207,146

Northern Ireland (NIRO)

1,103,986

1,007,920

91.3%

£3,918,181

 £3,879,870

Total

100,748,885

90,214,078

89.5%

£445,796,489

 £441,443,651


Suppliers that presented ROCs towards their obligations and have fully discharged their obligation received buy-out fund recycle payments on 12 October 2017. Suppliers that are due to make a late payment will receive any recycle payment owed to them once their obligation has been discharged.

The amounts to be redistributed are shown in the far-right column in Table 1. We reached these values by withdrawing our and UREGNI's administration costs, factoring in interest and rounding down the redistribution amounts to the nearest whole pound. Suppliers received approximately £4.89 for each ROC they presented. The proportion of the total ROCs each supplier presented, and therefore the share of buy-out payments they received or are owed, is shown in Table 2 (rounded to 2 decimal places).

There was a combined shortfall of £18,684,068.35 in the England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland buy-out funds. This was due to sixteen suppliers not meeting their total obligations by the above deadlines. These suppliers consequently owe late payments. The deadline for suppliers to make late payments is 31 October 2017 and we will redistribute them before 1 January 2018. This will include interest paid by the suppliers at an annualised rate of 5.5% (5% + Bank of England base rate) as well as interest earned on the funds while in our accounts. When we redistribute the late payments we will also confirm the final recycle value, which will include an extra amount on top of the £4.89. This does not include two suppliers (GB Energy Supply Ltd and Open Electric Limited) that went into Administration during the 2016-17 RO year. Given this, it created a further shortfall of approximately £7.2m across the three RO buyout funds. Fortunately, this amount did not exceed the threshold required for triggering mutualisation.

For more information, contact: ROCompliance@ofgem.gov.uk