Good Energy pushes back against negative Ofgem report

Worst in the industry?

The push back comes after Good Energy was named as being the worst in the industry for social and environmental breaches in Ofgem’s report.

Good Energy, which claims to be a strong supporter of green energy and tackling climate change was shown to be the worst of the offenders when it came to failing to comply with Ofgem’s standards in 2019.

The report found here shows that the energy supplier failed to comply a total of 48 times.

What is the Supplier Performance report?

With the government pushing hard for renewable energy and hitting NetZero carbon emissions energy suppliers are under increasing scrutiny to ensure that they are working towards the goal of cleaner energy emissions.

The supplier performance report is used to show what energy suppliers have failed to comply with their environmental responsibilities and the number of times they have failed to do so.

According to Ofgem, most incidents of non-compliance are minor and administrative, although they reportedly have seen increasing instances of more serious non-compliance.

Suppliers are measured on how well they adhere to schemes such as the Renewables Obligation and the Feed-in Tariff scheme.

Energy suppliers that fail to comply with the schemes end up pushing up the cost of clean energy programmes for the wider industry which in turn results in higher energy bills for customers. It’s also harmful to the supplier as it then must pay into a fund operated by Ofgem to make up for any shortfalls.

The fact that Good Energy prides itself on being ‘green’ is the main reason the energy supplier has hit back at the regulator’s findings.

Good Energy fights back

Following the release of the report, Good Energy hit back saying that it was ‘infuriated at having been given the worst score among suppliers for environmental compliance. They argue that the results of the report are the result of a fundamentally flawed scoring system and have been punished for diligence.

All of Good Energy’s negative score in the report came from it supposedly failing to comply with the Feed-in-Tariff scheme.

“As a company that has always been an advocate for greater transparency in the energy market, we are infuriated that the report has been scored this way. There are several flaws with the report’s scoring,” said a spokesperson from Good Energy.

Punished for doing the right thing?

The supplier argues that it has one of the largest number of FiT customers in the industry with over 150,000 and complained that having just 15 errors among 15 customers is scored by Ofgem as 15 in 150,000.

Good Energy wants the way those figures are recorded and want to see the figures be based on a per 10,000 customer basis in line with other benchmarks such as those used by other data collection agencies.

 “A supplier which has high standards and looks to report mistakes in the data it holds – as Good Energy does – will receive higher marks for non-compliance than those that don’t bother. Meaning that data is potentially not updated and will leave consumers confused, and with a false impression of actual performance,” Good Energy said in a statement.

The supplier also believes that by combining the FiT and RO schemes adds to a lack of proportionality.

“Many suppliers in the market have been reported to have not paid their Renewable Obligations or share of the Feed-in Tariff. Good Energy not only emphatically pays its renewable obligations and share of FiT; it goes above and beyond those obligations in working directly with many renewable generators across the UK. Yet the report implies we have a poor record on this somehow. We will be contacting Ofgem again to understand why they continue to pursue what we believe is a grossly misleading approach.”

Further Reading

Covid-19 pandemic to cause global energy investment to plummet by $400 billion this year

Energy Suppliers call for Government Bailout as more businesses and households struggle to pay bills

The post Covid-19 Energy Forecast: What comes next?

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