There’s a lot of conflicting information about the immediate cause of the recent mega-blackouts in Spain and Portugal. The governments in those countries claim the causes are “still unclear” after the largest blackouts in history. Given the rather spotty record of truth-telling by national governments, I suspect the causes of the blackouts are clear to those who are in a position to know.
What we on the outside do know, though, is that Spain and Portugal, like most European states, have spent years trying to replace tried and true energy sources with more unreliable and costly sources of energy in the name of “net zero” or the “European Green Deal“
Some critics of Europe’s fashionable policies on renewable energy have suggested that the blackouts are to be expected given Europe’s reckless pursuit of unreliable energy sources such as solar and wind power. Today, for example, Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform UK Party, predicted that “the lights are going to go out here too” if Britain carries on with “renewable lunacy.”
A symbol of this policy could be the 2022 destruction of Teruel’s thermoelectric coal power plant in Spain. Rather than modernize the plant or replace it with a cleaner-burning coal plant, the plant was decommissioned and then demolished in 2022 as part of Europe’s drive toward “renewable” energy. As described by an article expressing approval of Spain’s transition away from traditional (and very reliable) power sources:
Over the course of its existence, the 1.1 GW plant produced 224,000 GWh, the equivalent of the energy consumption of the entire Iberian Peninsula for a whole year. After forty years, the age of coal is over for Andorra and the time of renewable energy has begun.
In the near future, the area will become a “hybrid” hub, with solar plants, wind farms, battery storage systems and a green hydrogen factory.
This sort of thing, of course, has been going on all over Europe. One of the more notable cases is Germany’s destruction of its nuclear power plants mere months after the Ukraine regime—possibly with US assistance—sabotaged the Nordstream pipeline, cutting Germans off from a key source of power. Since then, German industry pays electricity prices that are “significantly higher than what companies pay in other major competitor countries.” This has impacted Germany manufacturing sector which “has struggled since 2021 due to rising energy costs...” Moreover, in times of less sun and wind, Germany must import energy from nearby countries.
Other countries have faced similar problems as well, and even though energy prices have been rising substantially, Europe’s ruling class continues to insist on “green energy” that has yet to deliver the sort of energy output that it necessary. Anca Gurzu provided a summary on January 15 of this year:
Europe’s industrial electricity prices skyrocketed in recent years, accentuating its competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis the United States at a crucial time in the energy transition, when both regions are trying to carve out a place for themselves in the nascent cleantech manufacturing market otherwise dominated by China.
Between 2019 and 2023, the United Kingdom’s industrial power prices grew by 124%, Hungary’s by 171%, Poland’s by 137% and France’s by 93%, according to data from the U.K. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which combines data from Eurostat and the International Energy Agency.
(In contrast, in the United States, energy prices grew by 21 percent during the same period.)
Cripplingly high prices are not the same thing as blackouts, however, so it’s unclear that the switch to renewable energy is necessarily the cause of this blackout. The fact that the blackout occurred is simply the latest evidence of the same phenomenon driving the shift to “renewable” and more expensive power. Namely, the ruling regimes of Europe simply don’t consider it a priority to provide inexpensive and reliable energy to the ordinary people who suffer most when blackouts and price surges occur.
In Western Europe, national regimes began nationalizing the energy sector beginning the early 1950s. The stated reason for the regime takeovers of the sector was increased efficiency or that the governments could better deliver more affordable power. It’s now been more than seventy years, and one might think that the national governments would have become proficient at providing more than enough power to their resident populations. Apparently, that’s too much to hope for, but not because these governments lack the means. After all, these are wealthy Western states with enormous budgets. Spain’s national budget, for example, is nearly $600 billion, which is anything but austere for a country with fewer than 50 million people.
Yet, the Spanish regime, like most European regimes, is not motivated to ensure that their taxpayers don’t have to worry if the lights come on. This is in spite of the fact that marginal rates for income taxes in Spain are among the highest in the world, and other taxes like corporate taxes and VAT taxes are not exactly low.
The recent blackouts show that the regime’s priorities are elsewhere. Clearly, the “net zero” fad trumps any concern for reliable, affordable power for normal people who pay all the bills. What really matters to politicians is being able to brag at the next EU junket that your country installed some new wind farms, whether that actually helps people or not. Surely, there are other concerns, as well. Perhaps the ruling class of Spain is spending too much time pushing for perpetual war with Russia to bother with “boring” pursuits like a reliable electrical grid that the taxpayers have been squeezed for many times over.
Given the tax revenues and resources available to the Spanish regime, the disregard of reliable energy is clearly a choice that is being made. Unfortunately, since the energy sector was socialized long ago, the taxpayers are at the mercy of those choices.
