55 million. That’s the number of people who lost power during the blackout in the Iberian Peninsula. Transport came to a standstill, surgeries were postponed, teachers taught in the dark, families ate by candlelight. Onlookers described it as “post-apocalyptic.”
The saga was a brutal reminder that no modern society is as self-sufficient as it thinks. We are a civilisation dependent on energy.
When the grid goes down, the hyper-connected modern systems that power our modern lives collapse. For a country focused on driving growth, this is a stark reminder for the UK that we cannot build a future-proofed society without resilience infrastructure.
The human toll of these catastrophic power cuts is hard to quantify. But the economic consequences are already becoming apparent.
Early estimates suggest the blackout could wipe €1.6bn (£1.35bn) off of Spain’s GDP. That’s without taking into account the likely knock-on effect on investor confidence in the region and the broader disruption to businesses.
This nightmare scenario could just have easily played out in the UK. We got a glimpse of power-outage chaos when a transformer fire paralysed operations at Heathrow in March.
Over the course of 16 hours, the outage impacted 270,000 journeys, cost airlines up to £100m, and robbed the UK economy of millions in lost tourism.
Beyond the immediate chaos, the incident at Heathrow also threw a global spotlight on the UK’s vulnerability to infrastructure failures.
When the world sees a major international hub grind to a halt, it raises serious questions about the country’s readiness to handle future disruptions and erodes both public confidence and investor trust in its ability to keep critical services running.
Though Iberia’s blackout and Heathrow’s meltdown differ in scale, they should hammer home the same point: we are heavily dependent on electricity, and our infrastructure isn’t keeping pace with the mounting pressures it faces from a rapidly electrifying world.
This vulnerability was laid bare again this week when chaos erupted on the London Underground after a fault at a National Grid substation triggered a voltage dip. Several Tube lines went down, stations were closed, commuters were evacuated, and hundreds of businesses were left without electricity. A brief blip – less than a minute of power loss – caused an afternoon of immense disruption.
Energy infrastructure across the world is dealing with a complex web of physical pressure, environmental risks, and cyber threats – and it’s struggling to keep up. If we want growth and a tech-led economy, we cannot afford to ignore this reality.
Even with the power running, the UK’s creaking grid continues to cost the country. Years-long queues to secure a grid connection have become the norm, with some projects told they’ll have to wait until the late 2030s.
These delays are deterring investment central to the UK’s growth strategy. Back in March, for example, Microsoft warned that its £2.5bn plans to build data centres in the UK won’t be viable if National Grid is unable to give the tech giant access to the grid in a reasonable timeframe. For a government hoping to play a key role in shaping the AI revolution, the loss of this investment would be a devastating blow.
We cannot talk seriously about clean energy transition, driving economic growth, or leading on cutting-edge technologies while the grid is struggling to keep pace and actively deterring foreign investment.
It’s a lesson being learned in my own home country, the Netherlands, where it’s estimated that grid connection delays are costing the economy up to €35bn (£29.45bn) a year. That’s around 2.3% of its GDP. Applying that same proportion to the UK, we could soon face £58 billion in losses every year if we don’t act.
The UK has to prioritise grid resilience if it wants to safeguard the economy for the next generation.
Addressing this behemoth task will take strategic investment and smart decision-making. Technology can, ironically, help here.
Digital modelling and AI tools can provide the depth and breadth of insight needed to better understand the grid.
By identifying weaknesses in ageing infrastructure before it fails, predicting the impact of extreme weather, and simulating future demand, we can make more informed, proactive decisions.
These tools can also help to unlock additional capacity within existing systems, allowing projects caught in the gridlock to move forward without the need for years of physical upgrades.
Whilst all eyes are on GenAI, chips and data centres, we neglect the infrastructure that will enable them at our peril. A weakened grid is a threat to growth. A failing grid is an economic liability. And if recent events are anything to go by, the cost of inaction could be staggering.
Taco Engelaar is the managing director of Neara
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