A reliance on Net Zero energy left Spain and Portugal vulnerable to the mass blackouts engulfing the region, experts have said. The Telegraph has the story.
In what is believed to be Europe’s largest power cut, tens of millions of people were left without electricity, while flights were grounded, trains halted and whole cities were left without power, internet access or other vital services.
The cause of the initial fault in the region’s electricity grid is still being investigated, and the EU has insisted that there were no indications that it was a cyberattack.
However, energy experts have blamed a heavy reliance on solar and wind farms in Spain for leaving the region’s power grid vulnerable to such a crisis.
A state of emergency was declared in Spain, while in Portugal, water company EPAL said supplies could also be disrupted.
Queues formed at shops of people seeking to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.
Energy operators are fighting to restore power in Spain, Portugal and parts of France, and residents are being urged to avoid travel and use mobile phones sparingly.
Tens of thousands of British travellers could potentially be affected by airport disruption in the region.
Spain has seen a massive increase in renewable and low carbon electricity generation in recent years. Two decades ago more than 80% of its power came from burning fossil fuels such as coal and gas, as well as nuclear. Solar and wind provided less than 5%.
By 2023 renewable energy provided 50.3% of power. On Monday the proportion of renewables was far higher. Around noon, just before the crash, solar was providing about 53% of Spain’s electricity with another 1% from wind, according to Red Eléctrica’s own data. Gas was providing only about 6%.
On Monday Spain was forced to activate emergency measures to restore electricity across parts of northern and southern Spain, including switching hydroelectric plants across the country back on and importing power through giant cables with France and Morocco.
Traditional energy systems have mechanisms which allow them to keep running even if there is a shock, such as a surge or loss of power.
However, solar and wind do not have the same ability.
Electricity grids need what is known as inertia to help balance the network and maintain electricity supplies at a stable frequency. Inertia is created by generators with spinning parts – such as turbines running on gas, coal or hydropower – which wind and solar do not have.
Britain’s National Energy Systems Operator (Neso) compares it to “the shock absorbers in your car’s suspension, which dampen the effect of a sudden bump in the road and keep your car stable and moving forward.”
Kathryn Porter, an independent energy analyst, said: “In a low-inertia environment the frequency can change much faster. If you have had a significant grid fault in one area, or a cyber attack, or whatever it may be, the grid operators therefore have less time to react.
“That can lead to cascading failures if you cannot get it under control quickly.”
Duncan Burt, a former British grid operator and strategy chief at Reactive Technologies, said: “If you have got a very high solar day then your grid is less stable, unless you’ve taken actions to mitigate that. So you would expect things to be less stable than normal.”
Richard Tice, the Reform party’s deputy leader and energy spokesman, said the events in Spain should be a warning to Britain and showed the risks of net zero.
He said: “We need to know the exact causes but this should be seen as a wake-up call to the eco-zealots.
“Power grids need to operate within tight parameters to remain stable. Wind and solar outputs by contrast, vary hugely over long and short periods so they add risk to the system. The UK’s grid operators and our Government should take heed.”
Worth reading in full.
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Thank you for the links, Mr Morrison.
One problem we have is that nearly all our MPs signed up to the Climate Change Act. It seemed like good politics then.
Perhaps there is a change in the wind coming. This might help.
The new Chief Scientific Officer will be able to report that he has reviewed recent evidence on climate change – Happer, Wijngaarden, Lindzen et al. – and concludes that average temperature stopped rising about eighteen years ago; models overestimate warming and are not to be relied on; the link between carbon dioxide and temperature is tenuous at best and is insufficient to warrant de-carbonisation. In fact, higher carbon dioxide levels have contributed to desirable outcomes including shrinking deserts and record crop yields. Accordingly, the push to net zero should be abandoned and the Climate Change Act 2008 adjusted or repealed.
Politicians will be able to say – facts changed, I changed my mind. A respectable ladder to climb down will be available.
Aye, and pigs might fly.
The majority are not looking for a ladder to climb down. They don’t care that it’s right or wrong. They care that it’s a narrative they can use to consolidate power away from the local and toward the global. It’s about “these issues are too important to be decided in local / regional / national elections,” and most of all it’s about maintaining the illusion of democracy while allowing global institutions to run the world.
The global elite think of themselves as “citizens of the world,” so they’re no longer invested in national identity. That’s why it’s been so important for them to demonize any form of national pride or patriotism as racist and bad for the planet.
I have only met a few politicians, but I do think they care. It may be that they get sort of removed from reality over time, and think they know best. Good intentions, primrose path. But then we can vote them out.
In the meantime, if their sensitive political antennae detect a change in the career path/ voter wish list – let’s give them the means to help us by helping themselves.
You may be right about many of the low level MPs and other local politicians, but our leaders definitely do not care in the slightest for their citizens. They perform care theatre while acting in ways that further entrench a permanent government of globalist bureaucrats whose views are informed by globalist organizations.
As you say, climate change is normal. What is not normal is the political campaign that seems to rely on the lack of general knowledge about that fact. It may be that the natural process tends to be automatically stable, over a long term, after all.
It should be obvious that CO2 is a major energy transfer medium from the light to the plants, and then to us. It may be that artificial increased levels have been used in certain greenhouses to increase yield, but if it happens naturally, that looks good. The other side of the coin in gardening etc is that one of the problems from year to year is the variation in cloud cover during daylight, but then again if weather changes associated with increased CO2 levels result in a bit less useful light (due to cloud cover), it might tend to reduce growth a bit. Would that be a route to automatic adjustment? Don’t know, but might be worth looking into.
As far as I know, it is well understood that higher temperatures tend to lead to increased cloud cover, meaning more of the sun’s heat is reflected back into space. This is the thermostatic effect that keeps temperature within tolerable limits.
Socialists hate freedom, prosperity and capitalism. Capitalism is their most hated thing of all since it actually reduces poverty and the need for totalitarian rule, ppl that are better off are harder to control. The fact the main bi product of capitalism is plant food is why the need to demonise co2.
Except where capitalism is providing the weapons to fight what the left considers just wars.
Do you remember when Iraq was a just cause in those days before shock and awe?
They (the Left) may hate capitalism but they can work and promote their ideology with corporatism and that is now endemic in the West.
Climate Emergency has nothing to do with climate. It is a thing that we can’t see, that is happening usually somewhere else, that is the justification for wholesale societal changes.
I am much encouraged by this paper. You know, we lifted 1bn people out of outright poverty (<$2 a day) during the second half of the 20th century, making progress on every front really through economic development. How close we are to a real, sustainable world…
So more CO2 helps the world go green. At last, a green strategy that makes sense.
carbon tax is eugenics.
Here’s a great piece of information I discovered yesterday, from a book published in 1992 “King Arthur’s Place in prehistory – The Great Age of Stonehenge”, by W.A. Cummins.
“Pollen data from sites right across Europe have been used to produce a map of the mean July temperatures during this period. The samples used in this analysis are dated to about 4000 BC [the time of the early Neolithic, when farming was introduced to Britain from the continent], a time when the natural forests were as yet unaffected by the inroads of human activity. The mean July temperature in Britain was about 2°C higher than today [1992].”
So what did the higher temperature herald for the people of the British Isles? Drought, poverty and famine? No – it brought in the beginning of farming, a leap in technological activity (the first industrial revolution?) and ultimately the great Wessex culture which built the wondrous Stonehenge.
So for all these ‘Insulate Britain’ lunatics screeching about a 2 degree rise, inform them we’ll simply return to the pleasant climes our ancestors enjoyed 6,000 years ago.
It’s likely that this increase in plant life is driven more by outgassing of CO2 due to slightly warmer ocean temperatures coming out of the Little Ice Age than human activity. Agriculture thrived in the Roman Warm Period (easily as warm as today despite attempts by the climate cuckoos to erase it from the records), helping kickstart our civilisation.
Either way, the cult won’t like it. Their reaction to the prospect of fusion energy, or better nuclear technology is one of horror – not about the environmental impact, but because it could help keep industrial civilisation on the rails, and potentially allow third world countries to develop the standard of living enjoyed by the West.
Jordan Peterson put it best in his recent interview – they don’t love the planet, they hate humanity.
Yes, agreed. Oceans, Henry’s Law. All that.
But. The last four glaciations started warming at about 180 ppm CO2 and rolled over to cooling at about 280 ppm. There is some sort of natural regulator at work. ( I am happy with Albedo and dust – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987116300305)
Here we are at around 420 ppm co2. Likely due to industrialisation. But temperature is only up a bit, not going crazy. Lower, as you say, than Roman, Minoan, Middle Ages, Holocene optimum etc.
What I want to see nailed is the de-carbonisation stupidness. Fossil fuels lift people out of poverty. “Carbon” (co2) is good. Stop this regressive, hurt-the-poor-and-old foolishness.
But… more food = more people.
We want less food = fewer people = saving the Planet’s resources… something…
It would be interesting to find out how much agricultural yields have increased in rural Asian regions, for example throughout the traditional cooperative rice-farming practices of Bali, Indonesia. These farming collectives are known as Subaks and they have operated under a complex, ancient traditional form of management, where to cut a very long story short, cooperation and working in synchrony with natural processes is essential otherwise the system would collapse.
This traditional farming system could be a massively informative case-study that isolates the effects of C02 increases in recent decades with regard to average annual yields, from the effects of improvements in agricultural technology. This is because the system has literally been carried out in the same way for millennia; therefore any improvements in yields can only be a result of environmental factors!
I’ve often wondered why during the age of the dinosaurs there were so many truly massive species compared to today (with the exception of a few species of whales).
Could it be that much higher levels of carbon dioxide plus higher temperatures meant that the Earth was far more productive and able to support these massive creatures, and that in it’s currently impoverished state it can only support smaller animals? (even a large elephant would pale into insignificance beside a lot of dinosaurs).