It took just seconds for modern life in Spain and Portugal to grind to a halt on Monday when the power grid of the Iberian Peninsula shut down just after midday, causing lights to flicker out, traffic signals to darken and the transport system to seize, leaving passengers of underground trains to evacuate through darkened tunnels.
In what is thought to be the largest power outage in modern European history, 60 million people were left without power, possibly causing seven deaths. It was almost a day before power was fully restored.
Within hours, the outage had become part of climate culture warfare, with the conservative British newspaper The Telegraph, known for its climate scepticism, declaring in a front page headline, “Net Zero Blamed for Blackout Chaos”. In fact, the story accompanying the headline did not really say such a thing, but the experts it quoted outlined some of the possible frailties of renewable heavy grids.
No matter. Hours later, Australian Nationals senator Matt Canavan posted the story on social media, where a debate over renewables, net zero and power systems bubbled away. The world of conservative commentators pointed the finger, not least, on Sky News in Australia.
It is not yet clear what caused the blackout but here is what we do know.
Just days before the blackout, the Spanish grid operator, Red Electrica, had boasted that for the first time renewables had for a period provided 100 per cent of the electricity in the system.
A family eats a snack by candlelight during a blackout in Barcelona, Spain.Credit: AP
Spain’s grid is dominated by renewables, with wind making up almost a quarter of its overall power, followed by solar and nuclear. Fossil fuels provide just over 20 per cent of the mix.
Once the blackout occurred, Red Electrica told journalists in a conference call that sometime after 12.33pm the grid in the nation’s solar rich south-west suffered “an event”, stabilising itself in milliseconds. (I am relying for this on notes taken during the call, which was conducted in Spanish, by Bloomberg energy columnist Javier Blas, which he later published on X.)
