Between June 2021 and May 2022, 29 UK energy suppliers collapsed. It was the largest wave of supplier failures the UK energy market had ever seen.

The trigger was soaring wholesale gas prices, which rose nearly six-fold between February and December 2021. But that’s not the full story.

The National Audit Office (NAO) found the suppliers that failed had less money in reserve than the companies that survived. They'd priced customers below what it cost to serve them and had nothing to cover the gap when the market swung sharply. The reason they failed was exposure.

One of these suppliers alone served 41,000 businesses. When they failed, Ofgem appointed a Supplier of Last Resort for each. Their energy would continue to flow but there was no guarantee that their rate, the number they’d been planning around since signing, would remain the same.

That’s a school now unsure if they can afford a new teacher. A cafe halting its expansion plan. A factory making do with its outdated machinery. When your energy costs are unpredictable, when you face the prospect of higher costs with no control, your business suffers.

The mechanism behind that never went away. It's being tested again right now.

After 2021, Ofgem tightened the rules. But the underlying mechanism did not change: any supplier buying through the wholesale market carries that market's risk inside every price it quotes. A bigger buffer means it takes longer to fail but it doesn't mean the exposure is gone.

Exposure is being tested again. Since early March 2026, conflict in the Middle East has pushed UK wholesale gas prices up sharply, roughly doubling within weeks and remain in flux. It isn't the same shock as 2021, but it’s the same exposure on a new trigger.

How will suppliers react this time? Some will price that exposure in, even if it means a less competitive number today. Others won't: they'll take on more risk than their price should allow or subsidise to win the deal, with no plan for the maths to add up in the long run. Either way, it's not a discount that lasts, and it's your contract that's exposed when it stops.

tem isn't discounting. It's built differently.

tem’s infrastructure brings pricing innovation to a market that hasn’t seen change in decades. There's no trading desk, no built in risk buffers we don’t need; we price from a live portfolio of generators and businesses rather than routing through the wholesale market. Only a small residual of unfulfilled volume ever needs balancing, so a wholesale risk premium isn't sitting inside your quote the way it would be with a supplier pricing everything off the wholesale market.

tem's pricing intelligence has kept it, on average, over 8% more competitive than other suppliers since March 2026. That's because it models what it actually costs to serve every site, not what a wholesale desk needs to claw back.

tem's prices don't rely on risky discounts. That's what gives you the confidence we'll be around for the whole contract and beyond.