Renewables Obligation

  • Low carbon generation

    3G meets in-person| Lots discussed in our low carbon user group

    Last week I took a trip to sunny central London to attend Cornwall Insight’s Green Generators Group (3G), which is the user group for our low carbon generation service. In what felt like a novelty after a two-year hiatus of face-to-face forums, I was joined by my colleagues Dan Starman...

  • Low carbon generation

    CfD Auction Secures Greatest Amount Of Renewable Capacity To Date

    Yesterday, the government released the results of the fourth round of the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme, securing almost 11GW of renewable capacity across 93 projects, nearly double the 5.8GW awarded in Allocation Round 3 in 2019. The greatest capacity – at 7.0GW - has been secured from new offshore wind projects,...

  • Commercial and market outlook

    Ofgem outlines thinking on protecting credit balances and RO payments

    This article is an extract from our Energy Spectrum publication issued on Monday 25 April. If you are interested in receiving critical policy, regulatory, market and transactional developments across the energy sector, and would like a free full sample of Energy Spectrum, please request a copy here. You only need...

  • Regulation and policy

    Calm before the storm? 2021 energy supplier compliance developments

    The latest update to our Energy Supplier Compliance Portal went live on 4 May and includes changes to the compliance landscape during February to April 2021. While the previous quarter’s update reflected new principles resulting from Ofgem’s Supplier Licensing Review (SLR) and protections for prepayment meter customers facing self-disconnection, Q121...

  • Business supply and services

    Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: the RO late payment deadline

    Today (11 November 2020) Ofgem has confirmed that there will be mutualisation of the 2019-20 Renewables Obligation. On Monday, in our 'Energy Spectrum' Perspective, we explained to customer’s why this was important and likely and what it means for the energy industry. Find out more about a free trial to Energy...

  • Low carbon generation

    Mutualisation? Oversupply? Banking? Latest developments in the ROC market

    We track the ROC markets closely through our within-year and long-term market forecasts of ROC values and supplier costs. In this blog we provide a view on the latest market developments and our current forecast levels. If you are interested in the Renewables Obligation, or our market forecasts for the...

  • Home supply and services

    COVID-19-driven changes to electricity Third Party Charges

    The impact of COVID-19 on the energy sector has been a hot topic for the last few months. As we progress further into the UK’s lockdown period we are now beginning to piece together the wider picture of effects across energy Third Party Charges (TPCs). These impacts are expected to...

  • Energy storage and flexibility

    Storage story: a regulatory run-down

    While electricity storage has long been recognised as a crucial solution to mitigating the drawbacks of some types of renewable generation, it has taken some time for the regulatory and charging framework to catch up. It has taken years, but recent progress on the licensing and exemptions from some final...

  • Low carbon generation

    Cornwall Insight and the UK EfW market

    As the UK has continued its evolution towards decarbonisation, one of the lesser talked about success stories has been in energy from waste (EfW).  EfW in the UK has grown to around 50 operational plants processing around 12mn tonnes of residual waste (but with capacity to potentially process nearly 14mn...

  • Home supply and services

    Editor’s Pick | All Hallow’s Eve in the retail market

    This article was originally published in Energy Spectrum Issue 689 on 4 November 2019. Whether by accident or design last week’s last payment date for the 2018-19 Renewables Obligation (RO) followed nine days after Ofgem issued its proposals and impact assessment for ongoing monitoring of energy retailers. Halloween was always going to...

  • Regulation and policy

    Is there an energy supplier heaven?

    Hapless demise Toto Energy’s exit of the market on 23 October pushed the number of suppliers leaving the market in 2019 alone up to nine. Alongside this, Gnergy has been issued with a Final Order, while both Nabuh Energy and Breeze Energy find themselves subject to Provisional Orders, meaning that...

  • Low carbon generation

    Renewables Obligation Mutualisation Looms again

    The end of October marks the end of the annual Renewables Obligation (RO) compliance period, where electricity suppliers that have not already fulfilled their obligation must make payments into the ‘late payment fund’. As we saw last year the spate of supplier exits from the market created a shortfall in...

  • Power and gas networks

    Saudi oil attacks raise prospect of higher energy bills

    Confirmation from the Saudi Arabian energy minister that drone strikes had reduced the country’s oil output by around half is set to resonate across the energy markets, given that the country is responsible for around 10% of the world’s oil production. Early trading on Monday has seen the price of...

  • Commercial and market outlook

    Five things we learnt from Energy Spectrum | 660

    Despite being championed regularly by the government during the mid-2020s, more recently, the embryonic shale gas industry in the UK has had to make its own case. Support for that case could be seen in recent reports by UK Onshore Oil and Gas and others which demonstrate the potential for...

  • Energy storage and flexibility

    Imbalance prices turn negative for six straight hours

    Imbalance prices turned negative for 13 consecutive settlement periods on Sunday, as low electricity demand and high levels of wind output led the System Operator to reduce generation output from a variety of wind, combined cycle gas turbines (CCGT) and biomass power stations. The imbalance price dropped below zero in...

  • Low carbon generation

    New RO buy-out price confirmed amid expectations of mutualisation for a second year

    Ofgem has published the Renewables Obligation Certificate (Roc) buy-out price and Mutualisation Ceilings for compliance period (CP) 18 of the scheme. On 21 February it confirmed the buy-out price will be £48.78 per Roc, a 3.3% uplift on the previous year, in line with RPI inflation. This is the amount...

  • Low carbon generation

    FiTting up RO mutualisation?

    There is no official announcement so far about whether all suppliers have now paid their 2017-18 Renewables Obligations (ROs) in full. Reports in the press today state that one supplier has not paid £14.4mn it owes to the late payment fund, and is in merger talks with another medium-sized supplier....

  • Low carbon generation

    As the witching hour approaches, RO mutualisation looms

    Halloween is just a week away, and it is rapidly taking on a rather other-worldly significance for suppliers. This is because Ofgem reported yesterday that, based on supplier compliance under the Renewables Obligation for 2017-18 (CP16), there has been a significant shortfall by suppliers who have not submitted ROCs and...

  • Low carbon generation

    Wholesale price “cannibalisation effect” puts economics of renewables at risk

    Our research has revealed that as capacity and output from solar and windfarm projects increases in coming years, the “cannibalisation effect” is set to lower wholesale power prices to the extent that by the 2030s it could put at risk the viability of future renewables. With the withdrawal of government...

  • Home supply and services

    Index of Domestic Energy Supply Costs | March 2018

    Government policy costs drive up the Index of Domestic Electricity Supply Costs in April Policy costs exerted a 52 point increase on the Cornwall Insight Index of Domestic Electricity Supply Costs in April as the charges for subsidising renewable electricity, paying for the Smart DCC’s smart metering infrastructure, and social...

  • Low carbon generation

    Low-carbon levy costs to peak later than government expects

    Cornwall Insight's new paper - Static Electricity: New Controls for Low Carbon Levies - has found that despite the efforts to control the costs of supporting low-carbon deployment, a continued overspend is locked in well into the next decade. Alongside the 2017 Autumn Budget the government issued details of a...

  • Low carbon generation

    RO capacity climbing, for now

    As we issue our Baseline Long-term Roc Forecast for 2018, we take the opportunity to reflect on key trends seen in the renewables market and look at how the impending deadline for projects to accredit under the Renewables Obligation (RO) may impact capacity levels over the coming compliance periods (CPs)....

  • Low carbon generation

    PPA market interviews: 5 key trends in the renewables market

    As a part of Cornwall Insight’s Green Power Forecast report, we interviewed a number of suppliers, offtakers and generators in the market to identify key trends in the renewables Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) market. Here we detail five key trends that came from our interviews and research. The PPA market...