Renewable Blackouts?
February 13, 2026
Last year, Spain, Portugal, and a small part of France suffered a massive power failure. Jim Geraghty wrote about it here and here.
Geraghty:
Authorities in [Spain and Portugal] say they still don’t know why the power failed, which is A) not reassuring and B) going to spur suspicious minds to conclude that authorities secretly do know why the power failed but don’t want to tell them. Those immediate insistent arguments that the blackout had nothing to do with reliance on renewable energy certainly seem to be driven more by political and reputation concerns than a thorough examination of the evidence.
I wrote about this mysterious failure too here, where I noted this:
one central issue, as so often in this context, is intermittency (the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow) and how that is compatible (or not) with running a reliable grid.
[Bloomberg’s Javier] Blas quotes from a confidential report produced by the International Energy Agency (IEA), a once-respectable body that jumped too eagerly onto the climate bandwagon, but has expertise and data that continue to be of interest. Apparently, the IEA now concedes that “systemic challenges will emerge from balancing increasingly renewable-dominated grids during extended low-generation periods.”
And I wrote on it again here and here. In the latter instance, my post includes this:
the fact that the sudden loss in power led to the shutdown of the entire Spanish grid (and that of the luckless Portuguese, who are connected to it) seems to be related to the way that when renewables pass a certain percentage of the electricity generated, they effectively weaken a grid’s resilience. There are some workarounds to deal, in whole or in part, with that, but they were not in place in sufficient quantity in Spain, something that can, at least partly, be explained by the fanaticism with which Madrid was (and still is) pursuing its net zero goal, a goal determined by politics, rather than physics or by what is (for now) practical.
That fanaticism was in part due to Pedro Sánchez, who reacted poorly to suggestions that heavy reliance on renewables was to blame.
Another early effort to point a finger included claims the power outage was due to green energy such as solar and wind. That was quickly rebuffed by Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who claimed people propagating that explanation were “lying.”
Sánchez, the architect of Spain’s latest amnesty for illegal immigrants and, recently, a fierce advocate of tighter online censorship (those two developments are, of course, completely unrelated) likes to emphasize how opposed he is to “disinformation,” so we can be sure that he would not lie about people “lying.”
Somewhat awkwardly, a later Spanish report effectively contradicted Sánchez’s denials, and now France’s President Macon has weighed in.
The Daily Telegraph’s Kieran Kelly:
Spain’s national blackout was caused by the country’s over-reliance on renewable energy, Emmanuel Macron has said.
In response to a large-scale power cut that left millions in the dark in April, the French president said no country could rely so heavily on renewable energy…
Oh.
It is worth looking carefully at what Macron said. According to Kelly, “Mr Macron told the Spanish newspaper El Pais: “The debate about Spain is a false one. Its problem is that it has a 100 per cent renewable energy model that its own domestic grid cannot support.””
However, in his preceding paragraph, Kelly wrote, “Spain generates about 60 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, including wind, hydropower and solar power, according to Red Eléctrica de España, its electricity grid operator. Around 20 per cent comes from nuclear power plants.”
So, did Macron get it wrong? No.
The key is that word “model.” Spain has not yet reached that 100 percent level, but its government would like it to. As Kelly explains:
In 2019, Spain’s Left-wing government approved a plan to decommission the country’s remaining nuclear reactors between 2027 and 2035. It hopes to be able to generate about 80 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by the end of this decade. [Emphasis added.]
Insanity. But more madness is required. There’s a planet to save, you see.
According to the IEA, Spain’s target “is to hit 100% renewable energy in the electricity mix and 97% renewable energy in the total energy mix.”
While it is true that Spain does not yet fully rely on renewables, it had done so for the first time shortly before the big blackout and on the day itself, well, as I wrote last May:
66 percent of Spain’s electricity had been generated by solar (photovoltaic or thermal) power, with wind producing another 12 percent. The weather was normal (mid-50s to low-70s). Some suggested that wind speeds were the culprit. They had been fluctuating all day but fell sharply, just as there was a midday surge in demand. . . .
You can read a detailed summary of Macron’s comments here (in French), but he warns that, at least given current technology, no system can rely wholly on renewables. The blackout was due to the degree to which the grid was reliant on them (on that day, although he does not spell that out).
Macron’s overall message was clear. Any system that relies too heavily on renewables is inherently fragile.
#Science
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