Renewables Obligation Certificates presented and Redistribution of Buy-Out Funds 2025 to 2026
- Publication type:
- Transparency document
- Publication date:
- Scheme name:
- RO
Total obligation: 119,412,356 Renewables Obligation Certificates.
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 2025 to 2026, announced by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) on 30 September 2024, are:
- 0.493 Renewables Obligation Certificates per MWh of electricity supplied to customers in England, Wales and Scotland
- 0.193 Renewables Obligation Certificates per MWh of electricity supplied to customers in Northern Ireland
Multiplying these obligation levels by the total electricity supplied (in MWh) to UK customers during this obligation period (1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026) and rounding to the nearest whole number, the total obligation for 2025 to 2026 is 119,412,356 Renewables Obligation Certificates.
Split out for each obligation jurisdiction, this is:
- 107,554,713 Renewables Obligation Certificates in England and Wales
- 10,450,149 Renewables Obligation Certificates in Scotland
- 1,407,494 Renewables Obligation Certificates in Northern Ireland
Suppliers were able to meet their obligations for 2025 to 2026 by 1 September 2026 by:
- presenting Renewables Obligation Certificates to us
- making a buy-out payment of £67.06 per Renewables Obligation Certificate (these must be made by 31 August)
- using a combination of Renewables Obligation Certificates and a buy-out payment
Any suppliers who did not meet their obligations in full by 1 September were required to make a late payment by 31 October.
We have recently redistributed the Renewables Obligation buy-out fund for 2025 to 2026. Details of the obligations and total payments for each Renewables Obligation scheme are shown in the table below.
Suppliers that presented ROCs towards their obligations received buy-out fund recycle payments on 30 October 2026. The amounts to be redistributed are shown in the 'Buy-out redistributed’ column. We reached these values by withdrawing our and the Northern Ireland Authority for utility regulation’s administration costs and rounding down the redistribution amounts to the nearest whole pound.
Suppliers received approximately £5.23 for each ROC they presented. The proportion of the total ROCs each supplier presented, and therefore the share of buy-out payments they received (rounded to 2 decimal places), is shown in the table below.