The Renewables Obligation (RO) late payment fund 2013-14

Data, Correspondence and other

Publication date

Scheme name

RO

We redistributed the 2013-14 RO late payment fund last week. We paid a total of £6,171,656 to suppliers who presented Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) this year.

After obligated suppliers presented ROCs and made buy-out payments to us by 1 September 2014, there was a combined shortfall of £6,144,759.52 in the buy-out funds. This was because five suppliers did not meet their total obligations by 1 September, and therefore owed late payments. RO legislation specifies that late payments incur a daily interest penalty at an annualised rate of 5% + Bank of England base rate, this year equating to 5.5%. All the suppliers who owed late payments made them to us by the statutory deadline of 31 October.

As with the buy-out fund (which we redistributed last month), the amounts we redistributed included interest earned on the funds while in our accounts, and are rounded down to the nearest pound.

Details of the late payments we received from suppliers and the amounts we redistributed for each RO scheme are shown in Table 1 below:

Table 1
Obligation Late payments made by suppliers Late payments redistributed
England & Wales £6,168,455.55 £6,171,656.00
Scotland £1,735.00 £0.00
Northern Ireland £0.00 £0.00
Total £6,170,190.55 £6,171,656.00

Though we received £1,735 in late payments towards the Renewables Obligation Scotland (ROS), we did not redistribute this money. This is because RO legislation says that we do not pay out any individual fund amounting to lower than £50,000. This money will be added to next year’s buy-out fund instead.

We redistributed late payments to the suppliers on the same basis as the buy-out fund, i.e. in line with the proportion of the total ROCs they presented across the three schemes. Therefore each supplier received the same proportion of the late payment fund as they did from the redistribution of the buy-out fund – see the link above.

Suppliers received £0.60 per ROC presented after the redistribution of the buy-put fund. From the redistribution of the late payment fund, they have received an extra £0.10 per ROC. This means that the final ‘recycle value’ per ROC for the 2013-14 obligation period is £0.70, to the nearest penny. The exact value is £0.697412.

Final recycle values (i.e. after redistribution of both buy-out and late payment funds) from recent years are shown in Table 2 below:

Table 2
Obligation Period Final recycle value
2013-14 £0.70
2012-13 £3.67
2011-12 £3.58
2010-11 £14.35
2009-10 £15.17
2008-09 £18.61

Contact: rocompliance@ofgem.gov.uk