Renewables Obligation (RO) Buy-out Price and Mutualisation Ceilings for 2019-20

Guidance

Publication date

Industry sector

Generation and Wholesale Market

Scheme name

RO

The buy-out price for the 2019-20 obligation period is £48.78 per Renewables Obligation Certificate (ROC). This is the amount suppliers will need to pay for each ROC they do not present towards compliance with their 2019-20 obligation.

The mutualisation ceilings for the 2019-20 obligation period are £293,831,481.82 in England and Wales and £29,383,148.18 in Scotland (mutualisation does not apply in Northern Ireland). Mutualisation will be triggered in the event of a relevant shortfall in the buy-out fund. You can find the definition and amounts of relevant shortfall for each obligation period in Article 72 (3) in the Renewables Obligation Order 2015; Article 48 (3) and Schedule 3 in The Renewables Obligation (Scotland) Order 2009.

We update the buy-out price and mutualisation ceilings annually to reflect the average monthly percentage change in the Retail Prices Index (RPI) during the previous calendar year. The average RPI percentage change during the 2018 calendar year was 3.3% (Source: Office for National Statistics).

The buy-out prices and obligation levels for recent years are shown in the table below:

Obligation Period (1 April - 31 March) Buy-out Price Obligation For England & Wales and Scotland (ROCs/MWh) Obligation For Northern Ireland (ROCs/MWh)
2010-2011 £36.99 0.111 0.0427
2011-2012 £38.69 0.124 0.055
2012-2013 £40.71 0.158 0.081
2013-2014 £42.02 0.206 0.097
2014-2015 £43.30 0.244 0.107
2015-2016 £44.33 0.290 0.119
2016-2017 £44.77 0.348 0.142
2017-2018 £45.58 0.409 0.167
2018-2019 £47.22 0.468 0.185
2019-2020 £48.78 0.484 0.190

For more information, contact RECompliance@ofgem.gov.uk.