The National Grid is becoming ever more fragile, and net zero is to blame — Kathryn Porter.

How Blue States are lining up to follow the UK and EU into fiscal and energy collapse. We are getting Kathryn scheduled on the Energy News Beat podcast soon.

In her August 13, 2026, commentary for The Telegraph, independent energy analyst Kathryn Porter delivers a stark warning: Britain’s National Energy System Operator (NESO) is making the electricity grid more fragile precisely when operational standards should be tightened. Net-zero policies are the root cause.

Porter highlights NESO’s push to reduce minimum inertia requirements. Inertia—the physical resistance provided by the spinning mass of conventional generators—stabilizes grid frequency (nominally 50 Hz). Sudden imbalances risk frequency deviations that damage equipment or trigger cascading failures. As coal, gas, and nuclear plants retire in favor of inverter-based renewables (wind and solar) and batteries, synchronous inertia declines. NESO proposes lowering the threshold and relying instead on ultra-fast frequency response from batteries, claiming modest savings of about £96 million per year—tiny against the billions spent on balancing and the catastrophic costs of blackouts.

Batteries respond quickly but have sharply limited duration; they cannot sustain support indefinitely. Large volumes of rooftop solar and domestic batteries connect at low-voltage levels that NESO neither sees nor controls. Distributed resources create visibility and controllability gaps. An independent expert advising Ofgem expressed less confidence than NESO that risks had been adequately demonstrated and mitigated. Porter notes this comes amid elevated risks of simultaneous plant losses and recent European experience, including the April 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout exacerbated by low inertia and voltage issues linked to inverter-based resources.

The pattern is familiar across Europe: aggressive renewable mandates, accelerated fossil and nuclear retirements, rising balancing costs, interconnector dependence, and eroded system strength. The result is higher prices, tighter margins, and growing blackout risk—fiscal and energy stress that hits households and industry hardest.

American Blue States on the Same Trajectory

Multiple Democrat-controlled states have enacted ambitious net-zero or 100% clean/zero-carbon electricity mandates that mirror the UK and EU approach: rapid displacement of dispatchable (firm) generation by intermittent renewables plus storage, often with compressed timelines. These policies prioritize emissions targets over demonstrated system physics, inertia/system strength, and long-duration reliability. NERC’s long-term reliability assessments repeatedly flag elevated or high resource-adequacy risks across large regions as demand grows (driven in part by data centers and electrification) while firm capacity retires faster than reliable replacements arrive.

California stands out as the furthest along and the clearest analog. It targets 100% renewable and zero-carbon retail electricity by 2045 (SB 100), with interim goals. The state has led in solar, wind, and battery deployment. Yet residential and commercial rates are among the highest in the continental U.S.—roughly twice the national average in recent data—driven by wildfire hardening, rate design, capital spending under climate mandates, and the costs of integrating intermittents. Past heat-wave rolling blackouts (notably 2020) exposed vulnerabilities; battery storage has improved evening ramping, but duration limits and wildfire/transmission risks persist. NERC has rated the California-Mexico area elevated risk in coming years due to demand growth and planned retirements that can produce shortfalls during wide-area heat events when imports are constrained.

New York follows closely under the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (and subsequent updates): 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% zero-emission by 2040 (with economy-wide net-zero elements by 2050).

The state has closed or restricted reliable plants (including the Indian Point nuclear facility earlier) while pursuing offshore wind and other intermittents. Electricity prices are substantially above the national average; rate-increase approvals and capacity-market pressures have become political flashpoints. NYISO has flagged potential shortfalls in New York City and shrinking reliability margins as the aging thermal fleet provides essential services that renewables do not inherently supply.

Recent legislative adjustments have already begun softening timelines and measurement methods amid affordability concerns—an early signal of strain.

Other Democrat trifecta or strongly blue states with comparable 100% clean/carbon-free targets and high renewable penetration goals include:

• Washington (100% carbon-free by 2030 in statute for utilities)—aggressive early deadline.
• New Jersey (100% clean energy by 2035)—already seeing sharp bill increases tied to green mandates.
• Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, Maine—Northeast cluster with 100% carbon-free or net-zero timelines in the 2030s–2050 window, high rates, and constrained transmission/siting.
• Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Colorado, Oregon, Hawaii, New Mexico—midwestern and western states with 100% clean or carbon-free goals by 2040–2050; several sit inside MISO or other regions NERC has flagged for resource-adequacy shortfalls as coal/gas retire and intermittent capacity struggles to match firm needs under extreme weather.

Analyses consistently show that states with the strictest renewable portfolio standards, net-zero utility pledges, and related climate policies (predominantly blue) have higher-than-average electricity prices. Red states with fewer mandates generally maintain lower rates and more dispatchable capacity. Winter Storm Fern (early 2026) and other stress events underscored that wind and solar underperform precisely when firm power is most needed; emergency actions to keep coal online proved decisive in several areas.

The Shared Physics and Economics of Fragility

The UK problems Porter describes—loss of inertia, over-reliance on short-duration batteries, uncontrolled distributed resources, and regulatory willingness to relax margins for net-zero optics—are not uniquely British. Inverter-based resources reduce system strength and fault current. Batteries excel at fast response but cannot replace multi-hour or multi-day firm capacity or the full suite of synchronous services (inertia, voltage support, short-circuit strength). Distributed solar and storage create observability gaps identical to those NESO faces. Rising demand from electrification and data centers amplifies the mismatch.

Fiscal consequences follow: higher wholesale and retail prices, expensive capacity and ancillary-service markets, transmission upgrades, and eventual emergency interventions or delayed retirements that still leave residual risk. When blackouts or near-misses occur, economic damage and political backlash mount.

Europe’s experience (Iberian blackout, German industrial pressure, UK balancing costs) is the preview. California and New York are already exhibiting the cost and reliability symptoms; states with earlier deadlines (Washington, New Jersey) or large industrial/data-center loads inside constrained grids are next in line.Net-zero timelines that ignore the physical requirements of a stable synchronous grid do not eliminate risk—they concentrate it.

Porter’s critique of NESO applies equally to U.S. operators and regulators in blue states pursuing the same path: when standards are relaxed and experimental technologies are treated as full substitutes for proven firm resources, the grid becomes more fragile.

The question is no longer whether stress will appear, but which jurisdictions experience the most acute fiscal and reliability consequences first.