We came across multiple posts on the social media platform X on the following topic (1, 2, 3):
The X posts suggest that renewable energy was responsible for the massive blackouts that hit Spain and Portugal on 28 April.
While the posts all attribute the blackout to renewable energy in some way, the details vary across each post. One post featured above suggests that a ‘grid fluctuation from AC current due to running on too much solar/wind’ caused cascading shutdowns across the grid. The other two posts attribute the cause to ‘net zero’ and ‘shutting down coal and nuclear plants and focusing on solar and wind’ without going into detail.
Images of news articles were also included in the latter two posts with headlines that blamed renewables and net zero.
Spain’s Renewable Push
Spain has moved towards a larger share of renewables in its energy mix.
Data by the global energy think tank Ember shows Spain greatly increasing the share of solar and wind energy in the last two decades, while the proportion of electricity generated by coal decreased significantly.
43% of their electricity came from solar and wind in 2024, while 77% was provided by clean energy sources. Another renewable source, hydroelectricity, provided 7.4% of the country’s energy in 2023.
Misleading Headlines
Returning to the claims, we traced the first article, titled ‘Renewables Behind Catastrophic Blackouts in Spain’, to an image shared on X by Michael Shellenberger of a news article he had written, though we were not able to access the article.
Shellenberger is an environmental activist who has become known in recent years for adopting right-wing conspiracy theories, such as that the rioters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 were paid actors. He has run two unsuccessful campaigns for California governor in 2017 and 2022.
Shellenberger’s X post suggested that ‘too little “inertia” due to excess solar resulted in system collapse’.
We also successfully located the second article, titled ‘Net zero blamed for blackout chaos’, to a piece written in the Telegraph. The Telegraph, a UK-based broadsheet, is read widely and trusted by many, but it has a mixed record of factual reporting, having previously published misleading information about climate change and Covid-19.
When the article is scrutinised, however, the link between renewables and the blackout suggested in the headline appears to be somewhat misleading.
Rather than causing the blackout, the Telegraph article suggests that ‘a heavy reliance on solar and wind farms in Spain (left) the region’s power grid vulnerable (to the blackout)’.
Going into further detail, the article says,
‘Electricity grids need what is known as inertia to help balance the network and maintain electricity supplies at a stable frequency. Inertia is created by generators with spinning parts – such as turbines running on gas, coal or hydropower – which wind and solar do not have.’
Black Start
The tech publication Ars Technica better explains the situation that Spain and Portugal faced, going into detail about the process of a ‘black start’.
A black start refers to a scenario after power is lost, where power plants need to restart but themselves require power to start. Only certain power plants are capable of handling a black start.
Hydropower—a renewable energy source—can help in a black start, while wind power can potentially do so too depending on weather conditions. Both Spain and Portugal have significant hydropower.
However, solar plants lack these spinning parts, and are not ideal due to their source of energy being unavailable for large parts of the day.
Batteries can also help in a black start scenario, but Spain and Portugal have yet to install much battery hardware in their grid. Neighbouring grids from outside the blackout zone can also help in a black start, but the Iberian peninsula is poorly connected to the rest of the European grid.
The increasing reliance of Spain and Portugal on renewable solar energy may have contributed to vulnerabilities that were realised during the blackout.
The Spanish grid operator, REE, had warned in an annual report in February that it faced possible ‘disconnections due to the high penetration of renewables without the technical capacities necessary for an adequate response in the face of disturbances’.
Following the blackout, these vulnerabilities were reported on by reputable publications before being misinterpreted or manipulated by less credible sources.
However, some experts suggest that the high renewable capacity in Spain’s grid allowed the country to recover faster, as hydropower was highly flexible and locally installed solar panels could provide resilience to grid-wide outages.
These effects were evident as solar, wind and hydro continued to deliver energy in Spain during the blackout when nuclear, gas and coal were offline.
What Caused the Blackout?
Red Eléctrica de España (REE), the electricity grid operator, said that ‘very sharp fluctuation in power flows’ had caused a collapse across the power grid on 28 April due to a sudden loss of 15 gigawatts in power generation, but it did not indicate the cause of the blackout.
At present, the cause of the blackout remains under investigation but has not been determined.
Importantly, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has ruled out the possibility that excess renewable energy production had caused the blackout.
Supporting his statement, the Spanish energy think tank Fundacion Renovables explained that while larger renewable power plants had been disconnected upon the disturbance in the frequency of the power grid, this was done in accordance with national safety protocols along with plants of other energy sources such as nuclear.
They emphasised that ‘the fact that Spain has a high production of electricity from renewable sources has no link to the network failures’ and that the disconnect of the renewable plants was ‘a consequence and not the cause’.
Net Zero Truth
The high proportion of solar energy in Spain’s energy mix may therefore have contributed to vulnerabilities in addressing the black start scenarios encountered during the blackout, but they may also have contributed to the resilience of energy systems in other ways during the outage.
Headlines reporting on these vulnerabilities have been mischaracterised or sensationalised to suggest that renewable energy caused the blackouts when there is no evidence to support this claim.
In addition, hydropower, a renewable energy source of which Spain has plenty, is described as being an effective energy source for addressing black starts.
False details in the posts, such as that the grid faced ‘fluctuation from AC current due to running on too much solar’may point to malicious intent behind these posts. Solar panels run on direct current before electronic systems match them to the alternating current of the grid.
With the cause of the blackout yet to be determined, the information vacuum appears to have amplified misinformation and disinformation attributing the blackout to renewable energy in general.
As such, we find it mostly false that renewable energy caused the blackout in Spain and Portugal. There is no evidence that renewables directly triggered the blackout, but the increasing reliance on solar energy may have contributed to vulnerabilities in the grid affecting the recovery following the blackout.
