Tag: infrastructure

Spain’s blackouts are a disaster made by Net Zero

‘We face a long night’, warned Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez yesterday evening, after much of Spain, Portugal and south-west France were plunged into darkness by the worst power outage in European history. Tens of millions of people were left without electricity. Trains were halted, planes were grounded and the internet was shut down. Modern life ground to a halt across the Iberian Peninsula. Although the exact causes of the blackout have yet to be declared, we can be certain of one thing: the risk of such outages will only get worse as we embark on the path towards Net Zero.

Spain and Portugal are increasingly reliant on solar and wind power. Renewables were supplying 80 per cent of electricity just before the outages. The blackouts were triggered by a rapid loss of power – of around 15GW, the equivalent of 60 per cent of Spain’s national electricity demand. It is not clear what exactly led to this loss, although a cyber attack has been ruled out. What matters is that a renewable-heavy grid is far less able to absorb this kind of shock than one that runs on traditional energy sources.

Coal and gas plants, or hydroelectric dams, have what is called ‘inertia’ built into the system, whereas wind and solar do not. The spinning turbines used in traditional energy generation will not immediately grind to a halt when there is a fault, acting as a buffer against power outages. ‘In a low-inertia environment’, explains energy expert Kathryn Porter, ‘if you have had a significant grid fault in one area, or a cyber attack, or whatever it may be, the grid operators therefore have less time to react. That can lead to cascading failures if you cannot get it under control quickly.’

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Could renewable energy be to blame for huge Spain blackout? How outage struck days after country’s grid ran entirely on green power for the first time

Widespread power outages hit several countries in Western Europe this afternoon, triggering chaos as rail networks, traffic lights and communications networks went down. 

The shocking blackouts, which struck around 12.15pm CEST have impacted millions of people with almost all of Spain and Portugal affected. 

Parts of France, Andorra and Belgium also suffered outages, according to the most recent reports. 

Several metro and rail passengers were reportedly stranded in Madrid and Lisbon, while the international airports of both capital cities and several other airports across Spain and Portugal were closed.

Spain’s state electricity network operator Red Electrica said on X it had begun to restore power in the north and south of Spain, adding it may take some time to bring the whole grid back online.

Some critics have claimed that Spain’s integration of renewable energy sources into the European power network could have triggered the blackout, though the cause has not yet been established. 

Renewable energy sources – wind, hydro and solar power – met the electricity demand for all of Spain for the first time ever on April 16, according to Red Electrica, which says it is leading an ‘ecological transition’ in Spain’s energy sector.

Other theories include a cyber attack, as analysts pointed out that Europe’s energy grid has suffered a substantial increase in cyber attacks following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Meanwhile, a fire in southern France is reported to have damaged a high-voltage powerline between Perpignan and Narbonne, which may also have contributed to the outages, according to Portugal’s national electric company REN.

Red Electrica is now working with two of Spain’s largest electric companies, Endesa and Iberdrola, to investigate the cause of the outages. 

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Kiev broke energy ceasefire five times in 24 hours – Moscow

Ukrainian forces have launched five separate attacks against Russian energy infrastructure in 24 hours, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported on Friday. The strikes are the latest breach by Kiev of a US-mediated ceasefire on such attacks, the ministry said.

The listed incidents included shelling against elements of the Russian power grid and a drone strike against a transformer station, all causing disruptions in electricity supply, according to the ministry.

A partial ceasefire was announced by Russia on March 18, after President Vladimir Putin held a phone call with his US counterpart, Donald Trump. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has publicly supported the idea, but also complained that Russia wouldn’t agree to a full ceasefire. Putin cited difficulties with monitoring violations along the lengthy front line and the potential for Kiev to use the pause for military build-up, explaining his concerns about a full truce. Russia continues to honor the ceasefire on energy strikes despite Ukrainian breaches, the Defense Ministry said on Friday.

The Russian military has reported Ukrainian attacks breaching the moratorium on a daily basis, some of them involving long-range kamikaze drones targeting major energy facilities on Russian soil. The Defense Ministry has described the incidents as demonstrating Kiev’s duplicity.

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Why US shipbuilding is the worst and more money won’t save it

“We are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding,” President Trump said during his March 6 joint address to Congress.

The president did not break new ground with the announcement. Virtually every year, Navy and industry leaders complain that the United States does not invest enough in the nation’s shipbuilding facilities. Yet according to the Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers have appropriated more shipbuilding funds than the president requested for at least 17 of the past 20 years. Even with the extra funds, the Navy’s major shipbuilding programs have consistently fallen behind schedule and over budget.

Over the next three years, the Navy plans on retiring 13 more ships than it will commission, shrinking the fleet to 283 ships by 2027. According to the Navy’s current plan, the fleet will grow to 515 crewed and uncrewed vessels by 2054. To reach that goal, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the Navy will spend more than $1 trillion, nearly $36 billion each year for the next three decades on shipbuilding alone.

It remains unclear if the Navy can realize its plan, even if Congress provides the funds. Ramping up naval construction is not simply a matter of resources. The Navy spent $2.3 billion between 2018 and 2023 to increase the capacity of the submarine shipyards. Despite this investment, the production rate for Virginia-class attack submarines decreased from around two boats per year to 1.2.

In just 10 years after the end of the Cold War, the number of skilled shipyard workers shrank from 62,000 to 21,000. The number of workers has increased since 2001, but shortages remain. During a 2024 symposium, the director of the Navy’s Submarine Industrial Base Program said the United States needs to hire 140,000 workers just to meet the needs of the current submarine building program.

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Russia Says UK & France Behind Latest Attack On Its Energy Infrastructure

There’s been another reported attack on the Sudzha pipeline infrastructure in Russia’s Kursk Region on Friday. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova conveyed to journalists a Russian military assessment saying a metering facility was “de facto destroyed” in a Ukrainian HIMARS attack. 

But unlike some of the prior Ukrainian attacks on the area, the Kremlin is directly blaming the West, going to far as to say that orders for the new strike came directly from European capitals.

We “have reasons to believe that targeting and navigation were facilitated through French satellites and British specialists input [target] coordinates and launched [the missiles],” Zakharova said, as cited in national media.

“The command came from London,” she emphasized, describing it as part of a West-backed “terror” campaign meant to degrade and destroy Russia’s energy infrastructure. 

The Kremlin has concluded this demonstrates that Kiev is “impossible to negotiate with,” she explained. The Ukrainians have done nothing to actually uphold the energy ceasefire put forward by Trump, despite that Zelensky “publicly supported” it, she said, suggesting it was all an empty game.

“Over the past 24 hours, the Kyiv regime continued its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure using various types of drones and HIMARS multiple rocket launchers,” the Russian military had also described.

Russia has alleged Ukraine launched rockets on the Sudzha facility, which had already been damaged in an earlier attack this week, along with nearly 20 drones launched at an oil refinery in the southern Saratov region.

Ukraine is meanwhile denying the Russian allegations, instead suggesting it’s a false flag orchestrated by Moscow:

On Friday, Ukraine denied claims that its forces fired on the gas metering station Sudzha and accused Russia’s military of striking the facility.

“Russia has again attacked the Sudzha gas transmission system in the Kursk region, which they do not control,” Andriy Kovalenko, an official who is responsible for countering disinformation, said on social media.

The two sides have traded blame for violating the energy ceasefire on basically a daily basis since it was proclaimed. It seems to have barely held, if at all, despite ongoing pledges from both sides to uphold it.

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Kremlin Says Kyiv Hits Russian Gas System In Energy Ceasefire Violation…And Zelenskiy Can’t Be Trusted, But Putin Won’t Strike Ukraine Energy

The Kremlin says Putin’s order to refrain from striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure remains in effect after Moscow claims Ukraine struck Russian gas facilities in the Kursk region. These facilities were an occupation focus by Ukrainian forces which invaded Kursk last year — a prize to control Russian gas flow to Europe.

The Kremlin also claims that the attack on the Russian gas transit station in Sudzha proves Zelenskiy cannot be trusted.

Ukraine declared the gas station at Sudzha was hit by the Russian side in a provocation

The Sudzha GTS is a critical hub for Russian gas transit to Europe via Ukraine, the final supply route after others shut down. Its destruction will cut off Europe’s affordable gas, spike energy prices, and may hit every European’s wallet, especially during heating season.

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Zelensky Backs Trump Proposal To Halt All Strikes On Energy Facilities

Fresh off a Wednesday morning phone call with President Trump, Zelensky has said that he backs the US proposal to halt all strikes on energy facilities in the context of the Ukraine war, according to Bloomberg. Still, he has at the same time vowed to ‘win this war’.

Just hours prior, overnight, Ukrainian drones had targeted a Russian oil facility in Krasnodar Region, resulting in damage and a large fire at a oil tank. The one-hour phone call was described as “very good” by Trump on Truth Social.

“Much of the discussion was based on the call made yesterday with President Putin in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs,” the president wrote.

“We are very much on track, and I will ask Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, to give an accurate description of the points discussed.”

If the tit-for-tat strikes on energy facilities actually halt for the 30-day period, this could indeed jump-start other major agreements, a first in the war.

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Canadian man sentenced to 25 years for attack on Keystone XL Pipeline, US energy infrastructure

A Canadian man has been sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for attacking energy infrastructure in the United States, causing $1.7 million in damages. A judge ruled that his crimes met the legal definition of terrorism.

Cameron Smith, 50, originally from the Toronto area but living in Astoria, Oregon, was sentenced on Monday. In addition to prison time, he was ordered to pay over $2.1 million in restitution and $250,000 in fines. Smith also faces deportation upon his release.

Smith pleaded guilty in September to charges of destroying energy facilities. The attacks occurred in 2022 near Carpenter, South Dakota, and in 2023 near Ray, North Dakota. US District Judge Daniel Traynor handed down two consecutive 12-year-and-6-month sentences—far exceeding the federal guideline range of 3.5 to 4.25 years per count.

“Smith also admitted to damaging a transformer and pumpstation of the Keystone Pipeline located near Carpenter, South Dakota, in an amount exceeding $100,000, in July 2022. Smith damaged the Wheelock substation and the Keystone Pipeline equipment by firing multiple rounds from a high-power rifle into the equipment resulting in disruption of electric services to the North Dakota customers and resulting in disruption of the Keystone Pipeline in South Dakota,” the Justice Department says.

Prosecutor David Hagler defended the stiff sentence, arguing that Smith’s actions fit the definition of terrorism by “attempting to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.”

Smith’s defense attorney, Douglas Passon, pushed back, describing his client as a “hyper-aware individual wanting to create awareness about climate change” who intentionally chose remote locations to prevent harm to people.

In the South Dakota case, Smith’s attack led to the shutdown of a Keystone XL Pipeline pump station, causing a leak that damaged surrounding land. In North Dakota, he damaged transformers and infrastructure at an electrical substation, leading to power outages for 243 customers.

During sentencing, Smith told the court he had resorted to direct action out of frustration after years of attempting to raise awareness about climate change through legal channels. He pleaded for a lesser sentence, citing his autism and Crohn’s disease, said the Justice Department in a release.

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What? Texas Needs Equivalent Of 30 Nuclear Reactors By 2030 To Power AI Data Centers

The AI infrastructure trade (aka the Power-Up America basket which we recommended one year ago before it soared into the stratosphere), had taken a back seat in recent weeks, with some marquee names such as a Vertiv, Contellation, Oklo and others, tumbling from record highs amid growing speculation that China’s DeepSeek – and other cheap LLM alternatives – will lead to far lower capex demands than what is currently projected.

But while the occasional hiccup is to be expected, the endgame for US infra/nuclear stocks looks (millions of degrees) bright. Consider Texas, where demand on the state power grid is expected to expand so immensely that it would take the equivalent of adding 30 nuclear plants’ worth of electricity by 2030 to meet the needs. That’s according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the grid.

The forecast is based on the addition of new data centers needed to power artificial intelligence. And it’s raising concerns about whether infrastructure in the state, which last week we said wants to be “king of nuclear power as the Next AI trade unfolds” – will be able to expand fast enough…. and at what cost.

Coming out of the pandemic, electricity demand on the Texas grid was already growing faster than anywhere else in the country, Bloomberg reports. And now that’s being supercharged by AI, with the state vying to become the data-center hub of the country, if not the world.

Individual projects are already starting to request 1 gigawatt of power and they pose new risks to maintaining a stable grid, said Agee Springer, Ercot’s senior manager of grid interconnections. A gigawatt is typically enough to power 250,000 homes in Texas. The data centers “present a reliability risk to the Ercot system,” said Springer, who spoke on a panel at Infocast’s ERCOT Market Summit in Austin this week.

“We’ve never existed in a place where large industrial loads can really impact the reliability of the grid, and now we are stepping into that world.”

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“Needs To Be Torn Down”: LA Fire Stations Are In Total Disrepair

LAFD fire stations are in disrepair, with firefighters often funding and handling repairs themselves, according to The Free Press.  

At a Pico-Robertson station, two firefighters were seen filling a three-foot pothole with sand. At another, a sewage leak had persisted for six months—“now the ceiling is falling in.”

A source reported that at least 12 of the city’s 106 stations were infested with mold. At Fire Station 112, an April 2022 report found 2.3 million spores in the dining hall, where a safe level is under 700. A firefighter who paid for the test claimed his chief became so ill he was hospitalized, resulting in a thumb amputation. Another firefighter refused to enter the kitchen because his “face would break into hives.”

At a station east of downtown, a broken window had been boarded up, and roof tiles showed water damage. Another firefighter stated that the LAFD ignored a broken garage door for a year—only repairing it after the community raised funds.

A firefighter, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, said “anyone legitimate would say the station needs to be torn down.”

The Free Press article notes that the LAFD’s budget was cut by $17.6 million last year, a reduction Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said had “adversely affected” the department’s “ability to maintain core operations,” including fire prevention. Mayor Karen Bass has denied that the cuts have impacted firefighting efforts, despite blazes that have killed 27 people and destroyed 12,000 buildings.

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