Iresa and Smart meters - Green Energy response

27 March 2018

Iresa is the third small supplier to succumb to an energy market which is not working.

Doug Stewart, Green Energy UK’s CEO has long been calling for a stress test for new energy company entrants that will protect the consumer for the long-term. Please find below his response to today’s energy industry announcements:

“Iresa is the third small supplier to succumb to an energy market which is not working. How many more energy companies have to go bust using Ofgem’s recently introduced ‘safety net’ before there are some sensible stress testing of energy suppliers. Ultimately it is the consumer that pays when an energy company goes bust, although the energy companies pay the upfront costs of creating a fund these costs eventually get passed onto the consumer. We need to be looking carefully at the cause of these failures, before we have another Carillion on our hands.”

"It is interesting on a day that Ofgem stop Iresa taking in new customers that smart energy GB take the slightly aggressive stance of suggesting the Big Six will go bust if they don’t change. So far the only ones going bust are the new entrants offering unsustainable prices and using customer money for operating capital.

The energy industry has been the butt of criticism for some time but let’s be careful what we wish for; there might not be anyone prepared to take in the customers of failing suppliers without the Big 6"