ENB Pub Note: This is a massive wake-up call for the world. We have been saying for years that energy security starts at home, and “renewable” energy cannot replace fossil fuels. The world is about to find out how much the climate crisis narrative has cost the consumers. This massive blackout could hit any country or state with the same policies. Like Germany, much of the EU, the UK, California, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Hawaii. The trillions spent on “renewable” energy are a wealth transfer. Check out my podcast with David Blackmon and Robert Bryce here: Why the Lights Went Out in Spain, Portugal and France
A massive blackout in western Europe has sparked new fears that overreliance on wind and solar is making the grid dangerously unstable.
A massive blackout that left millions in western Europe in the dark has raised concerns among energy experts that the event stemmed from or was worsened by an overreliance on renewable energy. [emphasis, links added]
The outage, which occurred on Monday, disrupted communications, caused some water services to fail, shut down trains, halted electronic payments and ATM transactions, disturbed traffic, and stranded travelers around Spain, Portugal, and France.
Europe’s increased dependence on renewable energy, promoted by its pursuit of net-zero emissions policies, has made the grid more vulnerable to such disruptions, according to energy policy experts who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The grid failure that began in Spain also impacted its neighboring countries, as the grids are interconnected. Most of the power had been restored by Tuesday morning, the Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica de España (REE) wrote on X.
REE’s director of services for system operation, Eduardo Prieto, dismissed the possibility of a cyberattack and stated that “two separate disconnections” led to the grid failure, though a final report will determine the outage source.
“We don’t know exactly what the immediate cause was,” Emmet Penney, a senior fellow at the Foundation For American Innovation and writer, told the DCNF.
“Regardless of what happened, Spain has overindexed on renewable energy, which has left it vulnerable to what would be minor disturbances having a catastrophic effect.”
Penney explained that before the outage, much of the power portfolio in Spain was reliant on wind and solar energy production. In 2024, for example, 56% of Spain’s electricity stemmed from renewables, according to REE.
The outage comes less than two weeks after Spain announced that renewable sources had supplied all the electricity needed across the country’s mainland grid on April 16 — the first time this has occurred on a weekday.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that the outage occurred when 15 gigawatts of power were “suddenly lost from the system” within just five seconds.
This sharp decline disrupted grid frequency and led to cascading failures throughout the interconnected systems.
Portugal, which depends heavily on power imports from Spain, suffered widespread outages, while parts of southwestern France experienced brief disruptions due to the break in the electrical link with Spain.
At least five deaths have been attributed to the blackout due to oxygen machine failures and generator use, the Guardian reported.
Sánchez claimed that the blackout was not caused by the country’s use of renewables and further denied that a lack of nuclear energy contributed to the incident during a speech on Tuesday, adding that recovery “would have been slower” if the nation had relied more heavily on nuclear energy.
Less than two years ago, climate activists in Spain celebrated the announcement that the country’s largest coal plant would be shut down by November 2023.
A representative from Beyond Fossil Fuels said the plant’s closure highlights “how much renewables are outperforming fossil fuels on price, energy security, and desirability.”
Spain also plans to completely phase out nuclear energy, which made up 19% of the nation’s energy in 2024 according to REE, by 2035 in favor of renewable sources, though some companies in the country are lobbying to get the deadline pushed.
Other European countries like Germany have made similar pledges, though Italy and Belgium have recently moved to reverse their nuclear phase-out plans.
Top photo via On Demand News/YouTube screencap
Read rest at Daily Caller
