Blackout ends, blame games begin
14 July 2025
Thousands of people stuck in lifts, crossroads with no working traffic lights, disrupted public transportation, hours-long delays on the railways, and chaos in offices: These are just a couple of examples of the consequences of a blackout that occurred in Czechia in the first week of July.
If you feel like you've heard a similar story recently, you are right. In April, there was a comparable large-scale blackout in Spain and Portugal. While the Iberian one was likely caused by a miscalculation of the energy mix in the grid and operational mistakes, the Czech blackout started with a fallen wire and other technical failures.
The two blackouts are entirely unrelated, yet they have one thing in common: Populists are trying to paint them as a result of "green policies" and use them to shame renewable energy and the Green Deal unjustly.
Experts have shown this narrative to be false, providing clear evidence that renewable energy has nothing to do with the outages. Still, blackouts play into climate sceptics' hands as renewables are easy targets to blame.
 | Eli Volencová I don't know if I am more scared of spending a couple of hours stuck in darkness in a tiny lift or seeing populists spread disinformation at the speed of light. The likely winner of this fall's national election, Czech billionaire Andrej Babiš, didn't hesitate to post a video in which he called both the Czech and Iberian blackouts "the result of Ursula von der Leyen's insane green policy," stirring up conspiracies all over social media. |
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