Ofgem

🎉 This week, we’re celebrating 25 years of Ofgem! Curious about the journey of gas and electricity regulation in Great Britain? Watch our timeline video below and don’t forget to pause to explore each milestone in full 👇 #OfgemAt25

The other day someone told me that the best regulation ever thought of is the soccer ⚽ offside rule. Had he told me this when I first came to London, I would have said, “That’s the worst regulation because it stops movement.” However, now that I’ve been here for close to eight years and am just starting to fall in love with football, I understand what he’s saying. If there were no offside rule, the game would be boring, chaotic, and unfair, because players would just camp near the goal, and strategy would disappear. It’s a perfect sport with the offside rule. Why am I going on about this? Because Ofgem is turning 25! Yay! Happy Birthday, Ofgem. 🎂 No, Ofgem didn’t create the offside rule. Ofgem is Great Britain’s energy economic regulator. For 25 years, we’ve been setting the rules that keep the energy game fair, competitive, and moving forward, just like that offside rule. We’ve championed consumer protection, enabled innovation, and helped steer the transition to a cleaner, smarter system. Here’s to 25 years of powering progress and shaping the future of energy. I have wonderful colleagues, a great cafeteria and I can't wait for many more years at 10SC. Happiest Birthday (a day early so I can be first to say happy birthday). #OfgemAt25 #energy #climateaction

Tim Jarvis, Director General for Markets at Ofgem, will be joining us for a special headline address “Outlining Ofgem’s Regulatory Strategy for Retail Markets to 2030” this Wednesday at CI Live 2025!   Before joining Ofgem, Tim was a director at HM Treasury. He has previously worked for the Department for Business Energy, and Industry Strategy and Competition and Markets Authority. Tim has more than 25 years’ experience working in public policy and regulation, leading market investigations, price control reviews, and merger inquiries.   We’re looking forward to welcoming Tim to the CI Live 2025! stage, where he’ll share insights on Ofgem’s vision for the future of retail energy markets.

Ofgem’s original (Nov 2023) call for input on standing charges got 30,000 responses, with most calling this pricing system regressive and unfair. Our most recent call for input on alternatives to this system got about 300 responses. We had set out three alternative ways to allocate fixed costs: by volume of use; by ability to pay; or by contribution to peak demand. The team is now working through these responses: some want to abolish standing charges entirely and have all fixed costs recovered through a simple (and high) unit rate; others have argued for a more cost-reflective system which encourages electrification by keeping unit rates low; and system cost reduction by lowering peak use. Views on ability to pay are also mixed: some would prefer the Government to deal with this outside the price mechanism through welfare payments or targeted bill discounts. Others would build progressiveness into the price mechanism by (for instance) grading the unit rates or fixed charges by income or wealth. This is a complicated question and so the diversity of perspectives on this is both natural and welcome. I wanted to take a moment to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who took the time to think through these difficult issues and respond. Please do stay engaged with this project. There is a lot at stake here for consumers. As a conceptual framework for thinking about where we go next with this, I wanted to offer a couple of thoughts and would welcome views. It is useful to think of the fixed costs of the energy system (across generation, networks and supply) as either avoidable or unavoidable (or sunk). If costs are unavoidable, then the main economic consideration is to recover them in ways that cause the least distortion to production and consumption decisions across the economy. This is certainly very important when we think of cost allocations to the business sector. But for households, there is clearly an additional need (well articulated by the 30,000 responses) to ensure fairness in cost allocation. The challenge for the team is to work out what exactly this means. We can safely infer so far that asking all households to contribute equally to fixed costs is not seen as fair. If costs are avoidable, then other interesting possibilities open up. For instance, much of the fixed costs of generation and network could in principle be avoided in the medium to long term even with large scale electrification so long as peak demand was kept low. This gives us some intuition that our existing pricing system - which allocates the fixed costs of generation to the unit rate and the fixed costs of the network to the standing charge - is unlikely to be the most efficient system of pricing. But will consumers (particularly households) respond to peak pricing signals? This is the subject of an ongoing trial we are carrying out to gather some real-world experimental data on consumer preferences and response.

Ever wondered how the UK’s energy system came to be? 🎙️ Inside Energy by Ofgem is a new podcast hosted by Clare Nasir exploring Britain's energy transition journey. 📅 First episodes drop this month! #InsideEnergy #OfgemPodcast

It’s always good to keep your current energy account in credit but did you know around £240 million of credit in 1.9 million closed energy accounts is currently unclaimed.   We want this money back with consumers ahead of winter.     Suppliers have been working to re-unite people with their money but many of the closed accounts are missing names and current contact information. Have you moved in the last 5 years?  Was your account missing your contact details?   Did cancel your direct debit before you got your final bill?  You can contact your supplier using your preferred contact method or log into your old online account to find out if you have money in a closed account.

📻 Earlier today, Our CEO Jonathan Brearley joined Martin Lewis & Adrian Chiles on BBC Radio 5 Live. He broke down what’s behind your energy bill, why investing in the network matters and how our debt relief scheme is helping clear historic energy debt. Listen: https://ow.ly/Qjh850Xksi6

Yesterday, our CEO Jonathan Brearley visited GE Vernova’s Stafford facilities, joined by Ofgem colleagues and National Grid. 🔧 We toured their transformer and grid automation plants, met apprentices and discussed how our regulation of major projects and supply chains supports the UK’s net zero transition. 💬 The visit highlighted the economic impact of GE Vernova’s UK operations and the importance of effective procurement in unlocking domestic growth and innovation. 🤝 Ofgem is working closely with industry to accelerate investment in UK manufacturing, create high-quality jobs and foster innovation, all to help drive the clean power transition. Thanks to GE Vernova for hosting us and showcasing the future of UK energy infrastructure.

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) has hit a major milestone: its 100,000th application. That’s 100,000 steps towards a cleaner, greener future for homes and small businesses across England and Wales. Since its launch in 2022, BUS has helped thousands switch from fossil fuel heating to low-carbon alternatives like heat pumps and biomass boilers, with grants of up to £7,500 per installation. The milestone application was for a ground source heat pump for a farmhouse in the Lake District. A great example of clean heat reaching every corner of the country. September also saw record-breaking demand, with over 4,000 applications received. To meet this momentum, we have implemented new internal procedures that are streamlining processing and improving the user experience. A huge thank you to homeowners, installers and the wider supply chain for your interest and support for BUS. Let’s keep the momentum going. #NetZero #CleanHeat #BoilerUpgradeScheme #Sustainability #GreenEnergy

The Regulatory Innovation Office's AI Capability Fund is unlocking up to £3.6 million to support bold, experimental AI projects across UK regulators. At Ofgem, we’re developing an AI-powered tool to accelerate the delivery of up to £30 billion in funding for critical national infrastructure. By streamlining, we’re enabling faster innovation in our energy systems which is helping the UK transition to a smarter, greener future. Meanwhile, the Office for Nuclear Regulation is pioneering a regulatory sandbox to safely explore AI deployment in nuclear installations. #AI #Innovation #EnergyTransition #Regulation #Ofgem #Infrastructure #DigitalTransformation