Mad Miliband’s rush to net zero puts UK at risk of Spanish-style blackouts
At the end of last month, Spain, Portugal, and parts of France experienced a massive power outage. The blackout was likely caused by a reliance on non-dispatchable “renewable” energy sources, making the grid fragile and unable to handle sudden disruptions. Now, official reports are warning that Ed Miliband’s push for net zero risks the UK experiencing the same.
Unlike the Iberian Peninsula, where the electricity grid was restored within 24 hours, government officials have admitted it would take Britain “several months” to fully recover from a nationwide electricity outage.
In a March 2024 report, the National System Energy Operator (“NESO”) raised concerns that the switch from dependable gas to intermittent wind and solar power as part of Ed Miliband’s net zero push will reduce network stability and increase the risk of power outages in Britain.
NESO has also warned that the cost to taxpayers of funding measures to prevent the system crashing is set to increase significantly to £1 billion a year, citing the need for large investments in stability network services, such as mass battery storage, to back up the system.
In a report published in April, the International Energy Agency (“IEA”) also sounded the alarm over switching too quickly to renewables and the potential for severe frequency deviations and equipment damage.
In a briefing note circulated to delegates who attended an energy security summit hosted in London by Miliband, IEA warned of the premature retirement of gas power plants without adequate replacements, stating that energy systems face vulnerabilities from this approach and that systemic challenges will emerge from balancing mismatches between supply availability and demand in renewable-dominated power systems.
Even though experts have cast doubt on whether Ed Miliband’s target can be safely reached, Miliband has pledged to decarbonise Britain’s electricity network by 2030. The plan requires a huge shift to renewable energy and will make the UK one of the fastest adopters of net zero in the world.
The UK’s pursuit of net zero could potentially lead to months-long blackouts, causing significant disruption to public services, businesses and households, as well as loss of life, with all consumers without backup generators losing their mains electricity supply instantaneously and without warning.
Government officials have admitted that it would take Britain several months to fully recover from a nationwide electricity outage, which could have devastating effects, despite ministers playing down the prospect of such a blackout happening in the UK.
Big companies are now increasingly installing their own gas-fuelled electricity generators amid concerns over the reliability of the electricity grid. Major suppliers have reported a surge in requests from businesses, including data centres, wanting their own on-site power plants, The Telegraph said.
A former head of energy strategy for the Civil Service said the trend “represents a material risk to [the] Government’s clean power plans.”
Andrew Bowie, the shadow energy secretary, said: “With Ed Miliband in power, today it’s Spain but tomorrow it could be the UK. We have said all along Red Ed’s mad dash to net zero will jeopardise our energy security, economic security and national security. And this shows we are right. Kemi Badenoch has called time on net zero by 2050. Labour must listen to us and change course before it’s too late.”
The above is a summary of the article ‘Britain could face months-long blackouts because of net zero’ published by The Telegraph. Read the full article HERE.
Featured image: Spain and Portugal were plunged into blackouts on Monday, 28 April 2025. Source: ‘Britain hit by unusual power activity hours before Spain blackout’, The Telegraph, 29 April 2025
This article (Mad Miliband’s rush to net zero puts UK at risk of Spanish-style blackouts) was created and published by The Expose and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Rhoda Wilson
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I refuse to live in Ed Miliband’s grim future, without showers or kettles
The answer to climate change has never lain in the Energy Secretary’s vision of the world. We need something better, and fast
ZOE STRIMPEL
Ed Miliband is obsessed. The Energy Secretary is fired by the same manic hubris, that messianism that brings traffic to a halt, wastes police time and ruins people’s days, as the loony green groups Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. As with so many eco-zealots, people, indeed those Labour was elected to serve, are fodder, expendable, to be swept aside, as the dystopian vision for Britain – a decarbonised grid in five years from now – is forced on us.
On Labour’s election, Miliband promised to “move fast and build things” to the tune of £40 billion in investment per year. By “building things”, might Miliband actually mean destroying things? One thinks here of the planned halting of North Sea oil and gas drilling licences whose main effects will be that we are left with greater dependency on enemy states for gas and, it is estimated, over 100,000 British jobs are lost.
Unsurprisingly, Miliband has become an increasing liability for Labour. His plan to rewire the whole national grid and power the country, in short order, with wind and solar – a process that will be full of faults, eyesores, and grievous noise and other nuisances – are at “the limits of what is feasibly deliverable”, according to the Government’s own National Energy System Operator. It’s embarrassing.
It also won’t work, not just because it is not “feasibly deliverable” but because this is still Britain, and we can’t be entirely railroaded by the eco lobby. I am no fan of Reform, but I did find a degree of satisfaction in the deputy chairman and Lincolnshire MP Richard Tice’s warning to Labour about its renewables plans for his region. “We will attack, we will hinder, we will delay, we will obstruct, we will put every hurdle in your way. It’s going to cost you a fortune, and you’re not going to win. So give up and go away.”
Critics raged about how such a view translates to wishing for the loss of thousands of jobs created by the net-zero infrastructure industry. But this is a bit like pointing to the cost of fire extinguishers when trying to stop Rome burning. […]
But the current proposals are as pointless as they are dangerous. Britain, even as we are now, with minimal industry and a fast-diminishing farming sector, is hardly going to be make-or-break on this problem. The Americas, India, parts of Africa, the Arab world … these are the guys who could make a difference, but aren’t particularly bothered about doing so. In some cases, it’s the reverse.
Meanwhile, going full-tilt for net zero as Miliband desires is widely understood to be incredibly dangerous and a huge national security risk. Shutting down our own pipeline of gas means dependency on, and vulnerability to the likes of Russia, from whom we still import some gas, and Qatar, not exactly a liberal democracy, and a major exporter of natural gas to us.
Meanwhile, China makes 80 per cent of the world’s solar panels, and you can’t remake an energy grid in the image of Miliband’s dreams without being up to your ears in its monopoly on green energy. While Labour is busy cosying up to China, perhaps it should be thinking more about the American discovery of “communication devices” in Chinese-made solar power batteries and converters, which connect the panels to the grid. This equipment is capable of bypassing firewalls, with catastrophic national security consequences. Mike Rogers, a former director of the US National Security Agency, said: “We know that China believes there is value in placing at least some elements of our core infrastructure at risk of destruction or disruption.” This is a terrifying threat.
Yet Miliband and his fellow net-zero evangelists are choosing this future for Britain over one in which we can both boil the kettle when we want without fear of overtaxing the grid, and retain a degree of sovereignty, which will be handy when the next world war really gets into gear.
And the cost to us, modern people accustomed to life in the First World, of Miliband’s vision is simply unthinkable. We are, it seems, to begin to adjust to mass outages like that which brought Spain and Portugal to a standstill recently, due to an unexpected surge. Foul play by a foreign power has not been ruled out in that case either.
Haven’t we lived long enough in darkness, cold and hunger? The ability to have a hot shower, a freshly boiled kettle, bright light at will; to eat meat if meat is desired; to travel domestically and further afield however we choose, by car or plane or train … these are all things that we take for granted, and that we ought to take for granted. They are the rudiments and the building blocks of daily life in a civilised country.
The Telegraph: continue reading
*****
Ed Miliband’s net zero fantasy is turning into a real-life nightmare
The Energy Secretary’s green fanaticism exposes Britain to the risk of Chinese sabotage
BEN MARLOW
The net zero fantasy-land that Ed Miliband inhabits is a world of rainbows and unicorns where the sun shines 24 hours a day and the wind always blows. It is a mystical utopia in which zero carbon energy is abundant and so cheap it is practically free.
Meanwhile, the path to this arousing green nirvana is so smooth that one day we will surely be invited to skip down it in bare feet, holding hands and singing Kumbaya.
Unfortunately for wide-eyed Ed, it is becoming screamingly obvious to any objective observer that the world as he sees it isn’t just some harmless daydream conjured up by a gullible idealist. It is far worse.
Left unchecked and allowed to continue in his blind pursuit of this clean-energy Arcadia, the Energy Secretary will instead drag us into a fool’s paradise, fraught with danger and catastrophe that could ultimately cost lives.
If that sounds sensational then consider the findings of American experts who have uncovered devices in Chinese-made solar panels and batteries that could enable the circumvention of security firewalls so that they could be switched off remotely.
This is truly the stuff of 21st century nightmares. As shadow energy minster Andrew Bowie warned recently: “This green revolution will come with a ‘Made in China’ label.”
Indeed, that moment is already upon us, to such a degree that the renewables industry in Britain is almost completely dependent on Chinese products and components, particularly when it comes to solar panels and batteries.
The UK Government is waking up to the perils of using technology from China. But there is an obvious reluctance to move too aggressively as ministers walk a tightrope between rebuilding relations with Beijing and warding off genuine security threats.
It means our approach to the China question remains desperately muddled.
There is a sense too that Britain’s response is positively pedestrian, especially in comparison to some of our allies. While Whitehall wades through a cross-government “audit” of UK-China relations that is reportedly nowhere near completion, it is clear from the discovery of rogue communication devices in Chinese-made renewable energy equipment that the US is several steps ahead in identifying the danger.[…]
If, as suspected, Beijing has the ability to destabilise power grids in the West, damage energy infrastructure, and even trigger widespread blackouts, then there has to be an immediate and meticulous interrogation of every aspect of the clean energy supply chain to identify and remove every single bit of Chinese-made kit that poses a potential threat.
What’s more, such revelations should strengthen the case for a dramatic rethink of Britain’s turbocharged energy transition. The outages in Spain and Portugal have exposed the grave weaknesses in electricity grids that are too dependent on renewables.
At the same time, the world caught a terrifying glimpse of how quickly a wholesale blackout can trigger complete paralysis with trains, traffic lights, ATMs, phone connections and internet access failing across the Iberian peninsula.
The Telegraph: continue reading
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