The European Commissioner for Energy today rejected attributing last week’s electricity cut in the Iberian Peninsula to excess renewable energy production, praising the response of the Portuguese and Spanish authorities to the “worst blackout in recent decades.”
“There is no reason to believe that last week’s blackout is due to renewable energies,” said the European Commissioner for Energy, Dan Jørgensen, at a press conference on the sidelines of the plenary session of the European Parliament, in the French city of Strasbourg.
On the day that the European Commission proposed a roadmap for the EU to phase out Russian energy imports, Dan Jørgensen compared: “We can point to many countries with a very high level of renewables in their energy mix that have far fewer blackout minutes per year than other countries that do not.”
The European Commissioner for Supervision took the opportunity to “welcome the way in which the authorities of Spain and Portugal have dealt with the crisis.”
“We haven’t experienced a situation like this for decades. The European Parliament also assessed the way the situation was handled and congratulated the two governments concerned for their management of the crisis,” noted Dan Jørgensen.
As for the causes of such an incident, it is still “too early” to know what happened, stated the European official.
Even so, he assured that the European Commission “is following all this very closely and is also ready to assist experts,” at a time when internal investigations are being carried out in Portugal and Spain, and also at the European level.
“We are, of course, waiting for the conclusions, and we are also waiting for some recommendations. If there is anything we can do at the European level to prevent situations like this from happening again, then we are ready to help,” concluded Dan Jørgensen at the press conference.
A widespread cut in electricity supply last week left mainland Portugal, Spain, and Andorra practically without electricity, as well as part of France.
Closed airports, transport, and traffic congestion in large cities, and a lack of fuel were some of the consequences of the blackout.
The European Network of Electricity Transmission System Managers announced the creation of a committee to investigate the causes of this blackout, which it classified as “exceptional and serious.”
The organisation will investigate the root causes, prepare a thorough analysis and come up with recommendations in a final report on the incident.
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
