The lights have gone out in Spain and Portugal and if Britain isn’t careful, it could be next.
Under Labour and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s grand plans, the UK is racing to build a net zero energy grid by 2030, one of the fastest shifts anywhere on planet Earth.
But the chaos that engulfed the Iberian Peninsula this week should serve as a glaring, neon-lit warning to all of us.
Tens of millions plunged into darkness. Flights grounded. Trains frozen. Emergency services scrambling. Whole cities thrown back to the dark ages in the blink of an eye.
And why? Because they bet the farm on renewables, solar and wind, without building the tough, resilient backbone that a modern energy grid needs.
Here’s the brutal truth: Mother Nature does not always cooperate. The sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow. And when the system comes under stress, solar panels and turbines don’t have the muscle — the inertia — to hold the grid together.
As Kathryn Porter, an independent energy analyst, put it in The Telegraph: “In a low-inertia environment, the frequency can change much faster… That can lead to cascading failures if you cannot get it under control quickly.”
In short: no shock absorbers, no brakes — just a one-way ticket to blackout city.
Spain and Portugal gambled on idealistic green dreams. They forgot about engineering reality. And now they’ve paid the price.
Of course we must drive down carbon emissions. Of course renewables are part of the future. But engineering comes first. Reliability comes first. Otherwise, it’s not progress — it’s madness.
Elon Musk has said it clearly: renewables need robust backup systems — batteries, gas, nuclear — or grids will collapse like a flan in a cupboard.
Instead, Labour are barrelling towards a future where Britain could suffer the same fate, in even worse conditions — a winter blackout, where vulnerable people are left freezing and in the dark.
Richard Tice of Reform UK is right: “This should be seen as a wake-up call to the eco-zealots.”
Grid stability isn’t optional. It’s the bedrock of civilisation. Without it, everything else: hospitals, transport, the internet, even your mobile, stops working.
Britain must learn from Spain’s nightmare before it’s too late.
The rush to net zero cannot mean a rush to zero power.
Main Image: For illustration only. Image created on Grok.
Daily mail – Spain admits solar power maybe to blame