Ofgem warns energy suppliers it will clamp down on excess profits

People protest outside the Ofgem headquarters in Canary Wharf, London, after an announcement on the energy price cap last August. Photograph: Maja Smiejkowska/Reuters

The head of Ofgem has fired a warning shot at suppliers as the worst energy crisis since the 1970s abates, making clear that Great Britain’s gas and electricity regulator will clamp down on excess profits and that firms with weak finances should not pay dividends.

Jonathan Brearley, the chief executive of Ofgem, said during the past two years the country had experienced an “energy crisis genuinely unprecedented since at least the 1970s” and as more normal conditions returned it would be alive to profiteering.