Small UK Energy Utilities Seem to Be Lights Out

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Small UK Energy Utilities Seem to Be Lights Out 1

This is an odd thing happening in the land of the Green Grift.

It seems there have been all these smallish utility companies in the United Kingdom that have, for instance, sold off shares of their windmills or solar to folks – a co-op, if you will – in exchange for breaks on rates on gas or other things.

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It seems many of them are having real trouble.

There was one two weeks ago, Ripple Energy, which announced to its 20,000+ customers it was about to go ‘bust.’

…Ripple Energy, a renewable energy generation firm, asks customers to chip in money to co-own wind turbines or solar farms in the UK.

Rather than being an energy supplier, Ripple lets people buy shares in renewable energy sites. They receive discounted energy from major suppliers, such as British Gas.

This helps keep energy bills – and carbon footprints – low, the company says.

Since rates are sky-high in Britain, I’m not sure how successful that’s been, but people do like to buy into promises. 

Like the revolution the president of Ripple Energy promised not so long ago.

…The firm has 35 employees and is led by Sarah Merrick, who founded the business in 2017.

‘A clean energy revolution is underway in Britain, and it’s our mission to make sure real people are at the heart of it,’ she said in October.

A Reddit user with stakes in Kirk Hill Coop, a wind farm located in Ayrshire, Scotland, said they received an email from the group confirming Ripple is falling into administration.

Viva la revolution!

What a shame Ripple and its investors/believers are rolling out of it.

At least Ripple says it’s trying to find replacement energy sources for its co-owners of windmills and such modern green marvels.

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That’s not the case for the big boom heard last night when Rebel Energy went under.

…Rebel Energy has gone bust – bust leaving 90,000 customers without a supplier. Rebel Energy, which serves about 80,000 households and 10,000 business customers, will cease trading immediately.

Rebel was founded in 2019 by Dan Bates, a former energy trader with the oil company BP, to “make things fairer for customers and the planet”.

It seems that, contrary to Mr Bates’ assertion, things were not always ‘fairer for the customers’ who had to deal with Rebel.

A UK energy supplier with about 90,000 customers has gone bust, blaming a “perfect storm” of soaring wholesale prices and squeezed customers, on the day households face another increase in gas and electricity bills.

...It also had one of the industry’s worst customer service scores, according to Citizens Advice. The supplier came bottom of the consumer body’s rankings with a score of 2.4 out of 5 with 53 complaints per 10,000 customers between October and December 2024. Its customers waited one minute and 42 seconds on average when they called its helpline, while only 62.9% of emails were responded to within two days.

Rebel’s collapse comes weeks after the energy regulator for Great Britain, Ofgem, began disciplinary action against the company over concerns that it had not properly ringfenced the money it had collected from customers to be used to support renewable energy subsidies.

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What they’re referring to in the story with ‘on the day households face another increase‘ is that, on April 1, the British cap on utility rates increased by a scheduled 6.4%.

Energy bills will rise by 6.4% on 1 April, due to the latest energy price cap coming into effect.

Ofgem’s new price cap will take the typical dual fuel bill to £1,849 per year, an annual increase of £111, although the exact price you pay will depend on your usage. The price cap is reviewed quarterly, meaning this will cover April to June.

The rise follows a 1.2% increase in January and a 10% hike in October 2024, due to volatile wholesale prices. The higher energy bills will be particularly felt by many pensioners after losing their Winter Fuel Payment last year.

Energy customers in the UK have been told to shop around for the best rates, or deals they can wangle, and that’s been especially true with Labour in charge. 

The same Labour Party that stripped away elderly British pensioners’ small winter fuel payment this past winter, which turned into one of the most brutal in years.

But that’s also allowed very small ‘energy’ firms to spring up, sign up customers, and now that things are hideously expensive, also collapse from the strain. Thus leaving their customers scrambling for both energy itself as well as something they can afford.

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It gets more difficult every day in the Climate Cult driven madness that is the UK.

But when the Net Zero nut determining your country’s energy direction is concreting up the last natural gas fracking wells left while his committee of cultists is dictating that the public should ‘cut back on kebabs‘…well, hello.

…While voters might support the idea of reaching net zero emissions in principle, they are loath to make the lifestyle changes Miliband has championed, including the installation of heat pumps to replace their gas boilers and inconvenient low-range electric vehicles instead of petrol and diesel cars. On March 21, Miliband insisted that the Government was “absolutely up for the fight” over net zero. But the extent to which Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, will remain in the trenches with him is in doubt.

The most recent recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, the Government’s official adviser on net zero, were that the public should cut back on the equivalent of two doner kebabs’ worth of meat each week to help the country reach its target.

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I don’t really think a hundred thousand Brits losing their energy supplier and possibly sitting in the dark every couple of weeks or so is really of huge concern to him.

In fact, he’s no doubt thrilled there’s less kebabbing.

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