Spain’s government was forced to declare a national emergency at the end of April when the country’s electric grid blacked out for more than 18 hours. While the precise cause of the blackout has not been confirmed, it is clear that the widespread nature of the failure and its duration are due to Spain’s excessive reliance on renewable energy. The fragility of the country’s electric grid should serve as a warning to the United States that if the Democratic Party and its renewable energy religion regain power in Washington, we will face similar electricity outages nationwide.
On April 22, Spain’s power company boastfully announced that six days earlier, the electric grid ran entirely on renewable energy, including wind, solar, and hydropower. This was not an accident but a policy. Spain has spent billions of dollars on adding wind and solar power sources to the country’s energy portfolio while forcing coal and natural gas plants to shut down. It is one of the many European countries that has set a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions target for 2050.
But nemesis followed hubris, and just six days after that announcement, Spain was plunged into darkness because power grid operators failed to manage fluctuations in demand and supply of electricity adequately throughout the system. When a power grid needs a sudden burst of power, so-called “dispatchable” sources such as nuclear, coal, and natural gas power plants can quickly amp up to meet the required demand. However, “intermittent” power sources such as wind and solar, which depend rather obviously on the breeze and sunshine, are not capable of quickly meeting grid needs, especially if it is nighttime, cloudy, or overcast. With 80% of Spain’s power now coming from renewable sources, the country simply did not have enough dispatchable power on hand to keep its grid from collapsing.
Spain’s renewable energy failure knocked out Portugal’s grid as well, and it could have plunged the entire European continent into darkness had France not cut off its connection to Spain’s unstable system. Once the danger of contagion passed, France’s electric grid, which is mostly nuclear-powered, was instrumental in getting Spain’s lights back on. France has the same unattainable net-zero goals as Spain. However, it has at least pursued a strategy involving nuclear power, which includes plenty of dispatchable power for reliable electricity delivery. Like their European counterparts, the environmentalists in the U.S., who control the Democratic Party, want to do to us what net-zero fanatics have already done to Spain. They intend to push coal and natural gas power plants offline, leaving us with a grid dominated by renewable sources. This is what former President Joe Biden’s Clean Power Plan rule was designed to do before the Supreme Court held that he exceeded his authority under the Clean Air Act in West Virginia v. EPA. If Democrats were to gain control of the White House and Senate, they would do legislatively what the Supreme Court stopped them from doing administratively.
DEMOCRATS MUST STOP ABETTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
The prospect of Democratic Party power in Washington wouldn’t be so dangerous if the Left were as open to nuclear power as it is to wind and solar. But it is not. Like the governments of Spain and Germany, the Democratic Party is irrationally fearful of nuclear power. It will not allow the building of the infrastructure needed to make the industry successful in the U.S. Witness former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) hostility to nuclear storage.
To prevent prolonged blackouts such as the one in Spain, Congress should pursue an all-of-the-above strategy that includes permitting reform, spending on power line transmission, nuclear regulatory reform, and the continued development of oil and natural gas. It is impossible to blackout-proof our electric grid from future Democratic Party efforts to reach fanciful net-zero targets, but Republicans should try to harden our power grid as much as they can now.