Following the major power outage in Spain and Portugal, Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker has called for serious attention to blackout preparedness. Speaking on Tuesday during the European People’s Party (EPP) Congress in Valencia, Spain, Stocker said that he is “very cautious” about attributing specific causes to the blackout. “Blackout preparedness is a serious matter,” emphasized the ÖVP leader.

Austria had already developed preparedness scenarios for such events even before the pandemic, Stocker noted. These scenarios show how crucial it is to generate renewable energy, store it for self-consumption, and reduce feeding it into the grid, as this could also improve resilience. Additionally, efforts must focus on investigating causes to identify where vulnerabilities might exist.

Stocker mentioned that some believe the specific situation of the energy sector on the Iberian Peninsula contributed to the outage, while such an event would be less likely in other parts of Europe due to more stable networks. On the other hand, he pointed out that the Iberian electricity market allows for easier price interventions – “everything has its pros and cons,” he concluded.