Minister says UK is preparing for blackouts after Spain power cuts

The UK is “constantly looking at our own resilience” to prepare for possible blackouts, a cabinet minister has said in the wake of large power outages which affected Spain and Portugal this week.

Environment secretary Steve Reed added that the UK must wait to see what caused the blackouts before learning lessons to help strengthen the UK’s energy network.

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 per cent of power has been recovered.

“We’re constantly looking at our own at our own resilience,” Mr Reed told Times Radio. “There’s a subcommittee of cabinet, chaired by Pat McFadden, that is doing that day in and day out.

“When it comes to what’s gone on in Spain and Portugal, we need to have a look at exactly what their investigation finds out, and then see what lessons we can learn from it.

“But it’s difficult to learn the lessons until they find out what’s caused it.”

It comes after Downing Street dismissed suggestions that a reliance on renewable power was behind the outages, following Kemi Badenoch’s claim that it was likely to be the cause.

The Conservative Party leader also said the UK’s net zero plans could lead to domestic blackouts, saying she had heard “different theories” about what happened in Spain and Portugal.

“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,” Ms Badenoch said.

“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.”

Her remarks came a month after a U-turn which saw her scrap her party’s commitment to net zero by 2050, saying it would be impossible to reach.

But a No 10 spokesperson 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,” the spokesperson said.

Earlier on Tuesday, energy secretary Ed Miliband warned 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.

Meanwhile, 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 that 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 21 March, which disrupted more than 270,000 air passenger journeys.

Mr Miliband said at the time that the government would “have to look hard” at “resilience” for major institutions such as Heathrow.