“There is no reason to believe that this [last week’s blackout] is due to renewable energy,” said European Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen of Denmark at a press conference.

“We can point to many countries with a very high level of renewables in their energy mix that have much fewer blackout minutes per year than other countries that do not.” The European Commissioner for the Protection of Health took the opportunity to “welcome the way in which the authorities in Spain and Portugal dealt with this crisis”.

“This is the worst blackout in decades and it is obviously a very difficult situation. The European Parliament also assessed how the situation was handled and congratulated both governments in question for their management of the crisis,” Dan Jørgensen noted. As for the causes of such an incident, it is still “too early” to know, according to the European official.

Still, he assured that the European Commission “is following all of this very closely and is also ready to help with experts”, at a time when internal investigations are being carried out in Portugal and Spain and also at the European level. “We are, of course, waiting for the conclusions and we also expect some recommendations. If there is something we can do at the European level to prevent situations like this from happening again, […] then we are ready to help,” Dan Jørgensen concluded at the press conference.