A massive power outage has caused Western Europe to have a multi-million dollar range in the dark, raising concerns among energy experts that the incident originated or worsened by excessive dependence on renewable energy sources. [emphasis, links added]
The power outage on Monday ruined communications, causing some water services to fail, shut down trains, stopping electronic payments and ATM transactions, interfering traffic, and stranded passengers around Spain, Portugal and France.
According to energy policy experts spoke to by the Daily News Foundation, Europe’s dependence on renewable energy makes grids more vulnerable to such disturbances.
The grid failure that began in Spain also affected its neighbors because the grids are interconnected. Most of the power has recovered Tuesday morning, Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica De España (REE) wrote on X.
Eduardo Prieto, Director of System Operations Services at REE, dismissed the possibility of a cyber attack and noted that “two separate disconnects” caused grid failure, although the final report would identify the source of the interruption.
“We don’t know what is the direct cause,” Emmet Penney, a senior researcher at the American Innovation Foundation and the Writers Foundation, told DCNF.
“Whatever happens, Spain over-indexes renewable energy, which makes it vulnerable to minor disturbances from catastrophic effects.”
Penney explained that before the power outage, most of Spain's electricity combination relied on wind and solar production. For example, in 2024, 56% of Spain's electricity is derived from renewable energy.
The power outage was less than two weeks after Spain announced that renewable energy provided all the electricity needed for the national mainland power grid on April 16, the first time it had occurred on a working day.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the power outage occurred when “suddenly lost from the system” in just five seconds.
This dramatic drop destroys the grid frequency and causes cascading failures throughout the interconnect system.
Portugal was largely dependent on the power imports from Spain, suffering widespread power outages, while parts of southwestern France suffered brief damage due to the rupture of its electrical connection to Spain.
According to the Guardian, at least five deaths were attributed to power outages due to the failure of the oxygen machine and the use of the generator.
Sánchez claimed that the power outage was not the reason for the use of renewable energy in the country, further denying that the lack of nuclear energy caused the incident in Tuesday's speech, adding that if the country relies more on nuclear, it would “recover more slowly.”
Less than two years ago, Spanish climate activists celebrated the announcement that the country's largest coal-fired power plant would be closed in November 2023.
A representative from Beyond Fossil Fuels said the closure of the plant focused on “renewable energy outperforms fossil fuels in price, energy security and desirability.”
Spain also plans to completely phase out nuclear energy, which accounts for 19% of the country's energy in 2024, according to REE data, and will benefit renewable energy by 2035, although some companies in the country are lobbying to push deadlines.
Despite recent actions by Italy and Belgium to reverse nuclear phase-out plans, other European countries like Germany have made similar commitments.
Top photo by On Demand News/YouTube screenshot
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