No 10 rejects ‘unfounded claims’ that renewables were behind power cuts in Spain
Widespread power cuts brought Spain and Portugal to a standstill on Monday.
Downing Street has dismissed suggestions that a reliance on renewable power was behind outages in Spain and Portugal, after Kemi Badenoch said it was likely to be the cause.
The Conservative Party leader also said the UK’s net zero plans could lead to domestic blackouts.
Widespread power cuts brought Spain and Portugal to a standstill on Monday as traffic lights switched off and people were left unable to access cash machines.
Spanish power distributors said on Tuesday morning that more than 99% of power has been recovered.
Mrs Badenoch said she had heard “different theories” about what happened.
“Some have said that it’s cyber terrorism, but the more likely issue is the grid – that when you have an electricity supply that’s reliant on renewables, you need a lot of battery storage.
“And quite often, what we’re seeing is renewables running ahead of the storage facilities, which means that when you have surges one way or another, you end up with blackouts.
“And this is one of the reasons why I’ve been saying that the net zero plans we have are not thought through.
“That we’re rushing ahead without having the right infrastructure in place and actually doing things that could end up bankrupting the country or creating blackouts.”
She scrapped her party’s commitment to net zero by 2050 in a U-turn last month, saying it would be impossible to reach.
A No 10 spokesman said it is too early to confirm the cause of the incident and defended the Government’s energy transition plans.
“In terms of the claims of reliance on net zero energy leaving countries affected vulnerable to power cuts, these are unfounded claims, and speculation at this stage,” he said.
Switching to clean energy offers security and a supply of electricity that fossil fuels cannot provide, he added.
“We’ve empowered the national energy system operator to carry out resilience functions across electricity and gas systems, and we’ll continue to work with industry and regulators to improve and maintain the resilience of old, new and future energy infrastructure,” he said.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband warned earlier not to “jump to conclusions about what happened” and said he had been in touch with the UK’s National Energy System Operator (Neso) after the outages in Spain and Portugal.
“We were not affected by them as a country. This is something that Neso takes incredibly seriously, that my department takes incredibly seriously.
“I would also add, because there’s been some comment on this, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about what happened. Let’s see what happened and the reasons for it and then let’s learn the lessons,” he said in the Commons.
The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told Sky News that the UK has a “continued approach” to “resilience” and “security issues”.
She added: “We’ve been looking, as part of wider security reviews across the country, how we deal with both resilience and also different kinds of challenges and threats.
“Some of which can be the traditional security challenges, some of which can be the kinds of resilience – things that we’re talking about in Spain and Portugal – and we obviously support them and the governments there in the work that they’re doing.”
The blackout saw train passengers stranded and millions of people left without phone and internet access.
The Portuguese National Cybersecurity Centre said in a statement there was no indication that it was caused by a cyberattack.
It comes just weeks after Heathrow Airport was forced to halt operations for most of a day after a power outage caused by a substation fire.
The airport was closed to all flights until around 6pm on March 21, which disrupted more than 270,000 air passenger journeys.
Mr Miliband said at the time that the Government will “have to look hard” at “resilience” for major institutions such as Heathrow.