Portugal says power outage shows need for EU to help fund grid modernisation
LISBON, June 25 (Reuters) - Iberia's blackout in April showed that European grids must modernise to cope with more renewable power generation, and Portugal wants the EU to help finance these investments, its energy minister told Reuters on Wednesday.
Energy minister Maria da Graca Carvalho said that unlike in the past, when thermal power plants facilitated grid management with their stable supply, more renewable sources such as wind and solar mean more intermittency and decentralised output which are harder to manage.
"The blackout made it clear there is a need for greater modernisation, digitalisation of the grids, applying data science, storing data, in order to understand what is happening in a more complex system and reacting to it," she said.
"It requires investment and we have been asking the European Commission to guide Europe in this investment and also help co-finance it because it is also a security issue," she said.
The Commission has estimated that to meet its clean energy transition targets, EU countries would need to invest 584 billion euros ($679 billion) to expand and modernise electricity grids by 2030.
In May, it launched a public consultation to receive input for the future European Grids Package, which is expected to be finalised by the end of 2025.
The Spanish government said in a report last week that grid operator Redeia (REDE.MC), opens new tab had miscalculated the correct mix of energy in the system on April 28, but also blamed some thermal power plants using coal, gas and nuclear, for failing to help maintain an appropriate voltage level.
A surge in voltage triggered a cascade of power plant disconnections, ultimately leading to the outage that spread to Portugal.
The minister said the report still lacked clarity and Portugal was awaiting an independent report from the European energy regulators' agency ACER to understand what caused the outage and what needs to be done to "avoid future blackouts and, if they occur, to be able to restart (the system) more quickly".
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Times
2 hours ago
- Times
How prepared is Ireland for the knock-on effects of a future war?
Ireland's decision to sign up to the European Union's €150 billion weapons fund was greeted with typical fanfare last Friday when it was announced by Simon Harris. The move, the tanaiste said, would allow Ireland and other countries to streamline the procurement of arms and defence systems. 'I am determined to provide for the development of a full spectrum of Defence Force capabilities that will bring Ireland in line with other similar-sized European countries,' Harris added. Europe is embarking on a mass rearmament because of the worsening security situation on its eastern borders and across the globe. The bloc announced the creation of a €150 billion fund called Security Action for Europe (Safe) in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the fact that America is no longer a reliable guarantor of European security as it turns its focus instead towards China, where the communist regime is building one of the largest militaries in the world. Defence spending across the EU is surging, with Nato members last week pledging to allocate 5 per cent of their GDP to defence amid rising fears of a potential war on the continent. This marks a sharp increase from last year, when only 23 of the alliance's 32 members were meeting the existing 2 per cent target. For its part, Ireland will spend €1.35 billion on defence this year, up €100 million on 2024, but amounting to only about 0.2 per cent of GDP. Is this enough given Ireland's vulnerability and stated position of neutrality? And is the country prepared for a coming war? The answer to both, in short, is no. Friday's announcement came amid ongoing government efforts to formulate strategies to address a worsening security landscape, compounded by decades of underinvestment in defence. The coalition has also struggled to educate an electorate that often conflates neutrality with protection, overlooking the state's inability to defend itself. Few Irish people think about serving their country by joining the military. The government and the military have promised but failed to revitalise the reserve Defence Forces. It is difficult to exaggerate the scale of the polycrisis facing the tanaiste, who is also the defence minister. Harris faces inertia in both the Department of Defence and the military, which is struggling on almost every front. And like militaries across Europe, the Defence Forces struggle to recruit and keep staff and even to put patrol vessels out to sea. Some of these patrol vessels are confined to port for months. • Alex Massie: It's time Ireland started to pay for its defence As of May 31, there were 7,468 Irish military personnel compared with 9,480 in 2010. Numbers within the Defence Forces have fallen nearly every year between 2010 and 2024. The Air Corps has no combat jets but does have maritime patrol aircraft. The Naval Service has a fleet of vessels but does not have the staff to put all but a few to sea. Crucially, the government and the general staff of the Defence Forces are not battle-hardened. They have no real experience of dealing with a conventional or hybrid attack. There is no single scenario for the outbreak of war in Europe but it could begin with a Russian attack on the continent's eastern borders, though it is more likely to be hybrid in nature with the Kremlin using terrorist groups, cyberattacks and sabotage to try to upturn European society or provide an excuse to take action. However, it could also involve an attack on a weak state such as Ireland, whose isolated location on the EU's western border in the north Atlantic makes it vulnerable. Neutral countries have no protection in war. • 'Ireland must recruit tech workers to counter Russia cyber threat' 'The Atlantic was and will always be challenged by Russia's north Atlantic fleet. If the UK currently feels threatened by Russia, why should we think Ireland is not?' said Riho Terras, an Estonian member of the European parliament and a former military officer. 'If Russia keeps on rearming at its current pace, pretty soon Europe and Nato will not have the ability to handle it. The Kremlin looks for weak spots. It's hard to understand why Ireland thinks it won't be impacted. Europe really does need to stop figure-skating when Putin is playing ice hockey,' Terras added. If a conventional attack were to occur under a dubious pretext, Ireland would be forced to seek assistance from other EU states and Nato as it does not have any capability to defend itself. Before Friday's announcement, the government was already trying to rearm the Defence Forces but struggling to make progress. It has announced the acquisition of sonar and primary radar systems, but this is not new technology and will also take years to become operational. 'We are spending €60 million on new technology we should have bought decades ago. The new maritime patrol aircraft we bought for €250 million have no anti-submarine kits because the department didn't like the sound of anti- submarine warfare equipment,' one retired military officer said. 'The sonar system we have bought has to be towed on a ship but we cannot put naval vessels out to sea. 'It's akin to the gardai celebrating getting flashing blue lights and sirens attached to patrol cars when they have no drivers. Nothing makes any sense,' the source added. 'If war breaks out and Russian submarines are entering our waters to sabotage undersea cables or attack Britain, we are powerless to do anything. This is very similar to the years leading up to the Second World War. We are not at the back of the queue to acquire military equipment — we are not even in the queue.' Like many other announcements on defence, the decision potentially to use the EU Safe fund to acquire arms and military equipment may turn out to be unnecessary. Money is not the issue with increasing Ireland's preparedness; it is decision-making. Ireland's acquisition of new sonar and primary radar was made without EU funding. A decade ago, Ireland signed a similar memorandum of understanding to allow for joint procurement with Britain but did not use it. Terras warned that the Safe programme might not even work. 'No EU country has to use it. If large and important countries like Germany don't use it, Spain and the rest of them won't either. It's a loan facility for those who need it,' he said. The announcement by Harris came amid government moves to restructure oversight of defence. It has announced the formation of a ministerial group, a revamped national security committee and the rebranding of the National Security Analysis Centre (NSAC), set up six years ago to advise the taoiseach on national security. The new group is chaired by Micheál Martin, the taoiseach. Harris attends, as does Jim O'Callaghan, the minister for justice, along with the secretaries-general of the relevant departments, the garda commissioner and the chief of staff of the Defence Forces. It is scheduled to meet every quarter, while the national security committee can meet on a more frequent basis. But many familiar with these entities describe them as 'old wine in new bottles'. The NSAC is widely considered to have been an abject failure. Various iterations of the national security committee took no action to stop the expansion of the Russian embassy when it sought planning permission, essentially to build a spy base in Dublin. Others point out how no action was taken when Russia's intelligence services managed to recruit an agent, codenamed Cobalt, inside the Oireachtas, who still remains in place. Neither Martin, Harris nor O'Callaghan have any real understanding of Russia and its determination to undermine the EU for strategic purposes. Harris is also struggling to overhaul the Department of Defence, though he has been credited with making decisions and pushing ahead with investment projects, often in the face of bureaucratic inertia. 'Harris is making decisions and he's getting projects across the line but he's struggling with the department and the military. He's making the right decisions when something is put in front of him but he's one man trying to reform a dysfunctional system,' one insider said. There are other problems that illustrate Ireland's unreadiness for war in Europe, according to Eoin McNamara, a defence researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. 'There are now long queues to buy military equipment around Europe, such is the demand because Russia is rearming at exponential speed,' he said. 'Time is not on Ireland's side. Decisions are not being made fast enough. Most countries, if they can't find an ideal defence system, are going for the second-best option, but Ireland isn't doing this.' Unlike other EU states, Ireland has failed to nurture a defence industry, though it urgently needs one. The government and the military have yet to demonstrate any novel thinking in terms of how to use new technologies to defend its citizens. 'Ireland is a small country that needs to think more about technological solutions to defend itself,' said McNamara who noted how Ukraine had shown the world how a country could defend itself through its own resources. Ukrainian-manufactured drones have inflicted the majority of casualties on the battlefield. 'Defence is a driver of innovation. Within Ireland, we could do something similar here and build a fantastic industry around defence technology. We need to recognise what's happening as an opportunity,' said Fintan Buckley of Ubotica Technologies, an Irish defence company specialising in artificial intelligence platforms for satellites. Ubotica's Space:AI system can detect, classify and track vessels, even those operating off the grid, to provide maritime situational awareness from space to seafloor. 'The initial response by the government to what's happening has been about getting more boots on the ground and more boats out to sea, but long term it needs to think about how we embrace technology to provide security to protect our critical infrastructure,' Buckley said. 'We need to foster a closer relationship between our Defence Forces and industry to help foster new technologies. We do this in other industries but we need to do the same with defence.' However, many experts believe that Ireland's greatest security vulnerability — one that arguably leaves it more exposed than its European neighbours — is that Russia, after years of intelligence-gathering in the state, already knows all of the above.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Climate is our biggest war', warns CEO of Cop30 ahead of UN summit in Brazil
'Climate is our biggest war. Climate is here for the next 100 years. We need to focus and … not allow those [other] wars to take our attention away from the bigger fight that we need to have.' Ana Toni, the chief executive of Cop30, the UN climate summit to be held in Brazil this November, is worried. With only four months before the crucial global summit, the world's response to the climate crisis is in limbo. Fewer than 30 of the 200 countries that will gather in the Amazonian city of Belém have drafted plans, required by the 2015 Paris agreement, to stave off the worst ravages of climate breakdown. And that crisis is escalating. In the last two years, for the first time, global land temperatures soared to more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – breaching the limit that governments have promised at multiple climate meetings to keep. Meanwhile, the US president, Donald Trump, has withdrawn from the Paris agreement and is intent on expanding fossil fuels and dismantling carbon-cutting efforts. The EU is mired in tense arguments over its plans. China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is rumoured to be considering weak targets that would condemn the world to much greater heating. And the attention of world leaders is elsewhere, as the conflict in the Middle East threatens to spiral further. Poor countries are labouring under a mountain of debt, and the continuing cost of living crisis in many countries is fuelling populism and a backlash against green policy. Toni, a respected Brazilian economist, told the Guardian: 'There's no doubt that the wars that we've seen – military wars and trade wars … are very damaging – physically, economically, socially – and they divert the direction and the attention from climate.' Vulnerable countries fear their concerns will be lost amid the push for militarisation. 'Spending more on defence means spending less on climate,' said Michai Robertson, adviser to the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis). But the questions for Belém cannot be ignored. Can the world cut greenhouse gas emissions far enough and fast enough to stabilise global temperatures? Is the lack of progress inevitable when hundreds of countries are trying to agree a way forward, or are more sinister forces at play, trying to throw up roadblocks? Has a recent meeting in Bonn done anything to bring more resolution and collaboration? Beyond 1.5C of heating, the impacts of climate chaos – heatwaves, sea level rises, species die-offs, droughts, floods and storms – will rapidly become catastrophic and irreversible. And we now know that the world could already be traversing vital 'tipping points', beyond which runaway climate change will be impossible to recover from within human timeframes. Anna Rasmussen, the chief negotiator for Aosis, said: 'Around the world, the 'unprecedented' has become our new norm. The economics of small island states are stymied by disasters we did not cause. Not even a year ago, the Caribbean was ravaged by Hurricane Beryl, the earliest category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic ever recorded.' Since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. Temperatures are affected by the cumulative quantity of carbon in the atmosphere, so every additional tonne counts: scientists have now calculated that we can only carry on producing current levels of carbon dioxide for two more years, ensuring the breach of the 1.5C limit becomes permanent. But while temperatures have soared, and weather records have tumbled, any sense of urgency inside the negotiating halls seems to have cooled. Two weeks of preliminary talks, intended to lay the groundwork for Cop30, have just finished in Bonn. They started two days late because countries could not agree an agenda, and ended without clear negotiating texts for the key points. Some of the frustrating lack of progress is inevitable, as countries grapple with geopolitics and the complexity of getting nearly 200 governments in line. But several negotiators told the Guardian they saw more sinister motives in play – deliberate attempts by some recalcitrant countries or their allies, usually fossil fuel producers, to throw up roadblocks. 'These are not accidents we are seeing, they are attempts to slow things down, no question,' said one. At one point, according to an observer, a key discussion degenerated into speculation about the buttons on a putative website presenting data, rather than addressing the substantive points. At the core of the Cop30 summit will be the national plans on emissions. Known as 'nationally determined contributions' (NDCs), these are the bedrock of the Paris agreement, setting out not just overall targets on how far governments intend to cut emissions over the next decade, but also indicating what measures might be taken in different sectors to meet those goals, such as boosting renewable energy or improving efficiency. The Brazilian hosts of the Cop30 summit are urging governments to finish their NDCs by September, so the UN can assess them ahead of the scheduled start of Cop30 in November. 'We are really far from where we need to go, even in quantity of NDCs, let alone how ambitious [they are] and the quality of them,' Toni told the Guardian. 'I don't think there is any excuse [for countries not to come up with new NDCs]. We are expecting NDCs that are improved, both in terms of ambitions and on their quality.' Most closely watched will be China. The world's second biggest economy and biggest emitter of greenhouse gases is also the global renewable energy powerhouse. China's green economy has outstripped all expectations, with about a third of electricity now coming from clean sources, and renewable generation capacity on track to double by 2030, compared with 2022 levels. China is also the biggest exporter of renewable energy components and electric vehicles, so stands to benefit from other countries setting stiffer targets on emissions. Experts believe that China could halve its emissions by 2035 without difficulty – yet the government is thought to be considering tabling reductions of only about 10%. Coal is the reason. While coal fell to its lowest share of electricity generation on record in May 2024, this year a surge of approvals of new coal-fired power plants, and investment in mining, has alarmed analysts. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion Gao Yuhe, of Greenpeace East Asia, said China could cause its emissions to peak this year if renewable energy growth continues. 'The year 2025 marks a pivotal moment in the country's energy transition,' she said. 'There is already enough existing capacity to meet today's peak demand. Approving a new wave of large-scale coal projects risks creating overcapacity, stranded assets, and higher transition costs. That will ultimately undermine progress toward a cleaner, more flexible power system.' The EU is locked in tense negotiations over its carbon target for 2040, which will be thrashed out next week. That target, which is expected to involve a cut in carbon of at least 90% compared with 1990 levels, would be the steepest yet presented, but arguments are raging over whether, and how much of, this could be met by trading carbon credits with other countries. When the 2040 figure is agreed, it must then also be translated into a commensurate 2035 goal – the end date for the current commitment period under the Paris agreement – and published along with further policy details as a fully fledged NDC in September. Other countries, including major emerging economies such as India, are still to submit their plans. 'There is a lot of watching and waiting going on,' says Arunabha Ghosh, the chief executive of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a prominent thinktank in India and one of the Cop30 envoys chosen by Brazil to support the aims of the talks. 'We should be judging countries on implementation – climate leaders are those who get things done, rather than those who say things.' A few countries have already presented their NDCs. The UK's is judged to be fairly ambitious, with an 81% cut in emissions compared to 1990 levels by 2035. Canada's effort and Japan's have both been found 'insufficient', however, by the Climate Action Tracker, which monitors the levels of countries' emissions reduction. A further problem is that none of the NDCs so far, which are pegged to 2035 or 2040, have contained revisions of countries' existing near-term targets. Current NDCs, set at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021, are inadequate to stay within 1.5C. At Glasgow, countries agreed that the 'ratchet' – the system for updating NDCs – should allow for the upward revision of targets more frequently than the five-yearly system laid out in the Paris agreement. Disappointingly, no countries have availed themselves of the opportunity, said Niklas Höhne, of the NewClimate Institute. '[To stay within the 1.5C limit] needs drastic reductions. None of the NDCs on the table have updated 2030 numbers. But if we do not do more by 2030, it will be very difficult to catch up later.' Last year's conference of the parties (Cop) focused on finance, and that will also play a major role this year. Developing countries need assistance from the rich world, to help them cut emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather. At Cop29, they were assured of $1.3tn a year by 2035, with $300bn of this coming in the form of public finance from developed countries. Those numbers will be harder to reach now that the US has pulled out of climate finance and other forms of overseas aid. Poor countries want to see concrete plans for how the financial flows will be reached, and Brazil is working with last year's host, Azerbaijan, on a 'Baku to Belém roadmap' due in October. Yalchin Rafiyev, the chief negotiator for Azerbaijan at Cop29 last year in Baku, warned that not enough was being done to meet the financial commitments made last year, particularly from the taxpayer-funded development banks. 'We have seen very low-profile engagement of MDBs [multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank] in climate-related issues,' he told the Guardian in an interview. 'We have opened the Baku to Belém roadmap to $1.3tn for wider stakeholders for their written submissions. So far, we have received 102 submissions, and only two of them are from MDBs. That's quite surprising, because they have always expressed their interest to be part of the process.' Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, the chief negotiator for Panama, said being able to show substantial progress on finance was crucial. 'We need to define what is the roadmap to close the finance gap towards developing nations, because if we don't address that, if we don't fill that gap, if we don't provide these resources, then we cannot expect developing nations to fulfil the goals of the Paris agreement,' he said. 'It's all about the money.' Brazil's agenda for Cop30 also gives little room for what many activists still see as the key question: fossil fuels. At Cop28, in Dubai, countries made a landmark commitment to 'transition away from fossil fuels'. At Cop29, attempts to flesh that out with a timeframe and details of what it would mean were stymied by opposition from petrostates, including Saudi Arabia. Activists had hoped to bring the commitment back to Cop30, to be elaborated and formalised into a coherent plan that countries would sign up to. But Brazil appears wary of reopening the debate, and would prefer to regard such past resolutions as settled. The presidency has been resistant even to the idea of a 'cover text', the catch-all outcome document that in most Cops captures the key resolutions. At Bonn, it was not clear where in the Cop30 agenda it would be possible to discuss the transition away from fossil fuels. 'We tried to get to discuss it [in various forums] but we keep getting it moved away,' said Stela Herschmann, of the Observatório do Clima network of civil society groups in Brazil. 'It's like nobody wants us.' Despite the frustrations of the last two weeks of pre-talks in Bonn, the goodwill that Brazil enjoys as host nation was much in evidence. The presidency has drawn on expertise from around the world, creating a 'circle' of the former Cop presidents since the Paris agreement was forged in 2015, a 'circle' of finance ministers from around the world, and a group of economists. Indigenous people will play a key role, with a 'global ethical stocktake' intended to reflect their concerns, involving Brazil's environment minister, Marina Silva, and well-known climate activists including Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland. Brazil has also set out an 'action agenda' to track progress on initiatives from previous Cops and to foreground key issues related to the climate crisis, such as food and agriculture, forestry and nature, water, oceans, social justice and equity. The irony is that the most substantive issue of Cop30 – the NDCs – will be out of Brazil's hands, decided in national capitals long before any leaders hop on planes for Belém. 'We don't negotiate NDCs at Cops – this is nationally determined, so what we will have at Cop30 is the report of those nationally determined decisions that have been taken,' said Toni. 'And yes, that can be frustrating. There can be a good picture or very bad picture, we will see, but it will be a reflection of national politics more than anything. We are obviously the designated president of Cop30, but it is a collective responsibility.'
Reuters
7 hours ago
- Reuters
Senate bill hastens end of wind, solar tax credits and imposes new tax
WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) - The latest version of the Senate's massive budget bill that the Senate is racing through for a vote as soon as Saturday deals a fatal blow to the use of tax credits in place since 2005 to spur more wind and solar energy and would set a new tax on those projects for the first time, renewable energy proponents said on Saturday. Despite hopes earlier in the week that the Senate would rework the budget megabill's language about the future use of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits to extend their use and make them more usable, the new version of the bill introduced by Senate leadership overnight will effectively repeal the incentives for solar and wind immediately. Instead, it imposes a new tax on wind and solar projects completed after Dec. 31, 2027 if they cannot prove they have not used any Chinese components, while offering a new tax break for coal production. It also accelerates the phase-out of clean energy manufacturing tax credits that have attracted billions in investments throughout the US, especially in Republican states. The clean energy industry and environmental groups decried the last-minute changes to the bill, saying that it will raise household energy costs and deprive the US of new, necessary and fast electricity capacity at a time of massive power demand amid a rush of construction of power-hungry data centers to power AI development. Trump's former advisor and head of DOGE Elon Musk blasted the bill on his social media platform X on Saturday, warning that the bill will "destroy millions of jobs in America" and cause "strategic harm." "It is utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future," he said. Energy security organization SAFE said in a statement that the bill, as written, would give an advantage to China, which dominates the clean energy and electric vehicle industries and is racing to outpace the US in AI development by taking away financing for energy storage, mineral processing and power projects. "Where the original Senate version was a recipe for energy stagnation, this is outright energy surrender—all but guaranteeing Chinese dominance of critical minerals, industrial supply chains, and AI development," said Avery Ash, head of government affairs for SAFE. Green energy opponents praised the bill for ending support for renewable energy. Trump on Friday evening called for the end of the credits and said they no longer need support. 'If, as supporters of the IRA are complaining, repealing these subsidies will 'kill' their industry, then maybe it shouldn't exist in the first place," said Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance.
