When half the nation’s retail energy suppliers, including Bulb with 1.7 million customers, failed during the gas crisis of 2021-22, the embarrassed regulator, Ofgem, decided it should probably pay more attention to companies’ balance sheets. The result was a new regime from March last year in which Ofgem set “capital targets” for each supplier to ensure financial resilience. The answer, found deep within an Ofgem report this week, is that even more suppliers failed to meet their capital targets at the latest measurement date. There were only 23 suppliers at the time, so slightly more than a fifth of the supplier base was out of line. It is impossible to say because there is no statutory timeline and Ofgem treats each capital-improving plan as unique.