Following a blackout last month, Portugal will ask the European Commission to put pressure on France on cross-border electrical ties, arguing that the Iberian peninsula is now at risk due to French delays on new connections. Long-standing disputes about connections for power trading with France have been rekindled by the disastrous outage, which started in Spain and brought down Portugal’s electrical grid.
Although Madrid has not yet identified the underlying cause of the April 28 blackout, some experts contend that Spain would have been a part of a larger, more resilient network that might have withstood the early shocks if it had had more power connections to France.
Will Portugal push Brussels to confront France on interconnections?
Maria da Graça Carvalho, Portugal’s energy minister, told the Financial Times that a lack of links between France and Spain was a “barrier” to the EU’s internal market, meaning that Brussels had the authority to step in under European law.
Carvalho, whose administration is running for reelection on May 18, stated,
We will engage the president of the European Commission to ensure our integration and mutual support in addressing problems.
“This is not merely a matter among the three countries; it is a European issue.”
France-Spain power lines were automatically cut off on April 28 to save the larger grid when the Spanish system started to fail, and the Iberian peninsula has among the worst connectivity to the rest of the EU.
Is France deliberately slowing Iberian energy integration efforts?
For many years, Madrid has accused Paris of obstructing further electrical connections between the two nations, allegedly because it wishes to protect France’s nuclear power facilities from an infusion of low-cost solar and wind energy from Spain. The French minister of energy chose not to respond. RTE, the grid operator in France, has denied that it is impeding the development of cross-border connections.
Xavier Piechaczyk, president of RTE, said: “We have consistently viewed interconnections with Spain as a matter of great significance, bound by both French and European obligations. Therefore, it is inaccurate to claim that France lacks a proactive role in these interconnections Spain.”
Piechaczyk pointed out that work was under way on a new connection via the Bay of Biscay, due to be completed in 2028, which will double the interconnection capacity between France and Spain to 5 gigawatts. A possible link between Landes in France and Navarre in Spain was given an €11mn EU grant for initial studies in January.
How urgent is the France-Spain electricity interconnection issue?
More connections are a “priority,” according to Spain’s energy and environment ministry, which also stated that it is collaborating “jointly” with France and the commission on the matter. Maria da Graça Carvalho, Portugal’s energy minister, claimed that a “barrier” to the EU’s internal market was the lack of links between France and Spain. Notwithstanding the Commission’s 2015 directive that the EU establish a fully integrated energy market, the goal is yet to be achieved.
Despite continuing to impose a post-blackout cap on its own imports of Spanish electricity—a “precaution” that has increased Portuguese electricity prices—Portugal is taking the battle to France. On the morning of April 28, Portugal was importing 35 percent of its electricity from Spain due to the low cost of Spanish solar power.
Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister of Spain, has rejected claims that the widespread blackout was caused by his nation’s reliance on renewable energy sources. In 2002, Brussels established goals for member states to import 10% of their power by 2020 and 15% by 2030 out of their local output. According to Madrid, the France-Spain relationship is less than 3%.
