<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-to-spain-does-blackout-disinformation-kill-climate-progress/>
"When Spain suffered a major blackout a few weeks ago, I spent plenty of time
raising the alarm – not about the blackout itself, but about the disinformation
firestorm that follows quickly whenever one of these incidents happens in a
region with high wind and solar.
In a recent conversation I had with
Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi about the 2016
blackout that occurred in South Australia, an incident I’ve compared to the
Spanish blackout, something significant occurred to me: what if misinformation
isn’t particularly effective at stalling progress?
While a storm of lies about the cause of blackouts can put dents in the road,
it is possible that the energy transition in Spain largely continues unabated,
despite these stalling efforts. So, I thought I’d check in on recent incidents.
For each of the major incidents in recent history where blackouts were
politicised specifically on wind and solar and climate policies more generally,
it is worth checking on clean energy progress. The Regulatory Assistance
Project published a compendium of these events in late 2022, and I have been
writing, posting and reporting on renewable energy blackout disinformation for
a long time now. My book,
Windfall, contains a detailed breakdown of the 2016
blackout, along with a series of subsequent blackouts that were blamed on
renewable energy.
Did any of these major, highly politicised and publicly significant events
cause a material or noticeable dent in wind and solar growth? Let’s dig in…"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
