Solar panel retailer Carolyn Lee is owed $40,000. She wants the government to step in.
Carolyn Lee has sold thousands of solar panels to households in and around Kiama on the NSW South Coast. For nine years, she has provided discounts, knowing that she will recoup the money through a government scheme to encourage solar uptake.
The company, Emerging Energy Solutions, is in liquidation owing millions to hundreds of trade creditors, mostly small retailers and installers in almost every state and territory, with the liquidators raising the possibility of insolvent trading, illegal phoenix activity, a shadow directorship and unreasonable transfers to related companies and individuals.
“Solar retailers are often small and medium businesses doing great work to accelerate our transition to renewable energy.”When rooftop solar is installed on a home, the consumers earn “small-scale technology certificates” based on the size of the system that serve as a rebate on the purchase price of their panels. In practice, they receive an upfront discount from the retailer or installer if they surrender their solar certificates to the retailer or their nominated agent.
The Clean Energy Regulator is involved only at the start and end of the process. It checks that the system installation, creation of the certificates and assignation to an agent has occurred correctly at one end, and that liable entities have surrendered the correct number of certificates at the other. Overseeing the part in the middle where retailers engage agents is, a spokesperson says, not the regulator’s job.
The liquidators, Graeme Beattie and Matthew Kucianski at Worrells, identified links between the collapsed company and two other companies: Greenbot and NetZero Environmental Group. They were all agents trading solar certificates, and Greenbot also had a software platform used by other companies including Emerging Energy Solutions.
The liquidators’ report says the company’s business and assets, including millions of dollars’ worth of renewable certificates, may have been transferred to related parties, in what could be “illegal phoenix activity”. Beattie says he is trying to minimise the impact on smaller creditors by seeking funding from larger creditors to continue investigations, including public examinations of key players in court.
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