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Spain’s renewables PowerGrid went from net-zero to net-nothing on Monday.

The blackout lasted 17 hours and turned the Iberian Peninsula into something resembling Communist controlled North Korea.

Sky News’ Madrid reporter, Ashna Hurynag, said it took only 5 seconds for the entire peninsula to lose total power.

Shutting down both Spain and Portugal, the BBC described the equivalent of a “climate justice” lockdown as post-apocalyptic.

I remember lots of blackouts as a kid in Sydney.
They lasted about 30mins.
Spain’s net zero blackout lasted more than 17 hours. Wouldn’t surprise me if some people died as a result. https://t.co/5bryqHQgNP

— Adam Creighton (@Adam_Creighton) April 29, 2025

Blackout Consequences

Small businesses, like ice creameries and fishermen’s co-ops, were hit hard, as were transport and communications.

At least one person is reported to have died in a fire, caused by a candle.

Even though power was slowly being restored, Spain was still experiencing complete chaos because of the country’s total power loss.

Blame Game

Spain’s Prime Minister, and leader of the Socialists, Pedro Sánchez, blamed private businesses, then demanded that these types of “disconnection events” not “happen again.”

Sánchez, whose Socialist government was returned to office on a “technicality” in 2023, despite the Conservative Popular Party winning, vowed to “hold private firms accountable,” the BBC added.

On X, Sánchez said the cause was unknown and told people to avoid speculation.

He also repeatedly called for calm, instructing citizens to only source their “information from official channels.”

Spain’s Popular Party leader, Alberto Feijoo called the electricity and communications outage “unprecedented.”

He then suggested Spain’s Socialist net-zero nanny state was proof the Spanish government had been overtaken.

Spaniards will want answers, Feijoo added, implying that the ineptitude driven by renewables-only fanaticism, was an embarrassment for a developed country like Spain.

For being thrown back into the Stone Age, Portugal’s PM, Luis Montenegro threw blame on the Spanish.

The Social Democrat said the problem originated from Spain’s faulty grid.

Originally thought to have been sabotage, authorities later ruled out so-called Russian interference.

Although this hasn’t stopped moves to establish an independent inquiry overseen by bureaucrats in the European Union.

The UK’s Sun had bizarrely tried to link the power outage to a pattern of alleged Russian sorties it claims is designed to disrupt Europe.

Atmospheric Destabilisation

Speaking sense, Spain’s Rede Eletrica Nacional (REN) power provider said they believe the blackout was caused by a “rare atmospheric phenomenon.”

REN posited that extreme temperature variations triggered vibrations in high-voltage lines, which they said caused the failure.

Chiming in, non-profit Institute for Energy Research (IER), which was founded in 1989, said this was a “dark start” to Spain’s reliance on renewables.

Mid-April, Spain proudly ran its “electric grid on 100% alternative energy. At the time of the blackouts, the country was running on 75%.”

Explaining the contrast between traditional grid power and renewables, IER said, the former can self-stabilise to maintain balanced generation, whereas the latter cannot.

“In a renewable-dominated system, the stability support traditionally granted by these traditional generators doesn’t exist.”

Despite the hype about the reliability of free, clean energy, fossil fuels would have been used to restart the renewables-only power grid, IER added.

“This blackout,” they concluded, “is the first caused by intermittent renewable energy, but there are probably more to come.”

Notably, IER defended Spain’s 7 nuclear power stations, by refuting the Spanish PM, who tried to argue that nuclear was no better.

Sanchez said that because the nuclear reactors had not resumed operating the day after the blackout, that nuclear “was no more reliable than renewables.”

Let’s see if I understood Spanish PM:

– we should not eliminate any hypothesis, but he has unilaterally ruled out any link to renewables

– nuclear power plants are bad

– we should wait to expert reports, but he contradicts the preliminary findings from the experts at the grid

— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) April 29, 2025

The gap with this argument, IER said, was Sanchez leaving out the bits about Spain’s nuclear plants being automatically shut down.

They discontinue output because “passive safety systems respond to any sign of a loss of power from the grid.”

By comparison, France’s grid, which generates “most of its electricity from nuclear, remained operational.”

Energy consultant, Kathryn Porter, appeared to agree.

Porter told the Daily Mail, “The more you have wind and solar on the grid, the less stable the grid becomes.”

Supply disruption with sole reliance on renewables is inevitable, she then implied, stating,

“When you are in a low-stability situation, it’s much harder to control what happens. Electrical things don’t like big changes in frequency and shut themselves down. They all start tripping off.”

Spain and Australia

Rightly criticising the climate catastrophising crisis, Australian LNP senator Matt Canavan wrote on X,

“Mainstream media was just pushing Spain as a utopia of high migration and high renewables. Now it’s been plunged into darkness by the biggest blackout in living memory.”

“Congratulations, Spain,” he later quipped.

Noting that Australia has the same “renewables player” as Spain, he added, Spanish Socialists “have an 81% renewables target. Labor has an 82% target for Australia. Not going to end well.”

For those in shock at the size of their electricity bill.

The answers to why our power bills are so high – despite Australia’s abundant energy resources – are in Chris Uhlmann’s excellent documentary on The Real Cost of Net Zero.

Free to watch!https://t.co/CcjWcEiJdw

— Senator Matt Canavan (@mattjcan) January 31, 2025

To quote environmentalist whistleblower, Michael Schellenberger, “Renewables don’t risk blackouts, said the media. But they did and they do.”

If legacy media were honest, they’d switch out combating “Climate Change” with implementing Communism, because the former is a politicised euphemism for the latter.

Regardless of the technical cause, Spain’s net-zero nanny state blackout is a clear warning: policy built on catastrophising about climate change has catastrophic results.

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Image via Wikimedia Commons.