The founders of Bath-based Pure Planet, which this week became the latest energy supplier to collapse, have hit out at the government over its handling of the crisis.
The firm became Britain’s first digital green energy supplier when it was launched in 2015 by some of the UK mobile telecoms industry’s most experienced executives.
It attracted more than a quarter of a million customers as well as a string of awards for its ethical stance and use of smart technology.
But this week oil giant BP, which backed Pure Planet, withdrew its support for the firm, saying there was a risk of “large potential losses” by continuing to operate while gas wholesale prices were high.
Pure Planet’s three co-founders Andrew Ralston, Chris Alliott and Steven Day slammed the Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng’s decision not financially to support energy suppliers.
They blamed the UK’s energy price cap for the firm’s collapse and said they were “being forced to lose money through a combination of sky-rocketing global wholesale energy prices clashing with a domestic staid government and regulatory policy – the price cap”.
“Simply, the rules prevented us from covering our costs,” they added.
The refusal to provide support was “illogical”, they said, putting its 200 staff at risk.
“Kwasi Kwarteng says the price cap is non-negotiable. Fair enough,” they said in a statement.
“But that doesn’t mean helping supply companies needs to be non-negotiable too. If he doesn’t act fast, he’ll have no suppliers to be minister of.”
A dozen energy suppliers had already gone bust before Pure Planet’s failure – 10 since the start of August – and the three co-founders warned more would follow unless the government changed tack.
Pure Planet’s bosses also said they had hedged against spiralling wholesale prices until next spring in contrast to some of the collapsed suppliers that attracted criticism from ministers for failing to do so.
Pure Planet’s 235,000 customers will now be placed with another supplier – putting them among more than 2m accounts to be transferred over the past two months due to business failures.
BP said it had worked to support Pure Planet and had given financial support through wholesale supply and other funding arrangements.
A BP spokesperson said: “However, despite considerable work over an extended period, we concluded it is no longer commercially viable for BP to continue this relationship and took this difficult decision.
Before co-founding Pure Planet Andrew Ralston and Steven Day had worked together since 1999 and were responsible for the launch of Virgin Mobile in the UK before going on to run Orange, T-Mobile and EE together.
