(Bloomberg) — Under a blazing Adriatic sun, life in Montenegro’s capital, Podgorica, came to a near standstill earlier this summer. Cars and buses were stuck in traffic jams as traffic lights went out, the internet crashed and security alarms went off in response to a sudden power outage.
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“After an hour without electricity, we were on the verge of panic because it was unbearable,” said Drago Martinovic, a 61-year-old retired police officer. “I’m afraid it could last even longer if it happens again.”
The bad news for Martinovic and hundreds of millions of people around the world is that the risk of power outages is increasing. Hotter summers mean spikes in cooling demand, as high temperatures cause cables to sag and wildfires to ignite. Upgrades to electricity infrastructure have not kept pace, even as efforts to reduce fossil fuel use make electricity distribution more important.
The blackout in Montenegro in late June, caused by a surge in consumption and unstable supply connections, knocked out networks in neighbouring countries and caused chaos in homes, hospitals and beach bars. The incident in the Balkans has been repeated around the world.
Millions of Houston homes suffered power outages after Hurricane Beryl last week, knocking out air conditioning as the storm followed in stifling heat. Power outages from Ecuador to India in recent weeks, hitting emerging and developed economies, offer a taste of the disruption to come.
The climate crisis exposes electricity grids to flash floods that topple power poles, droughts that dry up hydroelectric dams, and spikes in cooling demand during scorching heat.
“The entire energy system was built and designed in one climate era and is now being asked to operate in a different climate era,” said Michael Webber, a professor of energy at the University of Texas at Austin. “It just means there are more things that can go wrong.”
Unstable grids create instability for businesses, disrupt politics and threaten lives. According to BloombergNEF, grid expansion will cost about $24.1 trillion to meet net-zero targets by 2050, outpacing the investment needed in renewable energy capacity. The U.S. and China face the biggest bills due to their vast land areas and high energy consumption, but no country is spared.
Most blackouts occur when large parts of supply or demand suddenly turn on or off. Storm damage, a burst of renewable energy, or spikes in usage can all cause outages where the grid is not resilient enough.
Climate change is extending vulnerabilities beyond developing countries. The problems have recently hit more mid-market countries, including energy-rich Mexico and Kuwait, as well as importers such as Albania.
“As temperatures and access to air conditioning increase, the grid will come under more pressure,” said Felicia Aminoff, an analyst at BNEF. “We have already seen an increase in peak summer demand in certain European countries, such as Greece, and also in the Middle East.”
A common theme behind grid failures is poor planning. In Kuwait, residents of one of the world’s wealthiest countries endured rolling downages in June. Grid operators deliberately shut down parts of the grid to prevent a total blackout as power plants struggled to meet demand as temperatures soared above 50 degrees Celsius (122F). The incident led to fire departments being inundated with calls to rescue people trapped in elevators.
The OPEC member has warned that it may be forced to plan for further blackouts to prevent a system failure. “Nobody understood the importance of taking preventive measures,” said Fuad Al-Own, a former official at Kuwait’s ministry of electricity and water. “You have to plan years in advance.”
Kuwait can invest in its electricity grid thanks to its huge oil revenues, but other countries are less fortunate.
In Ecuador, metro passengers were forced to disembark from stationary trains and walk through unlit underground tunnels to the station after the South American country’s worst power outage in two decades in June.
Although Ecuador has larger oil reserves than Mexico, it is heavily indebted and relies on the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral lenders for financing. Some of its problems are related to poorly planned projects such as the $3 billion Coca-Cola Sinclair facility.
The 1,500-megawatt hydroelectric plant normally supplies about a quarter of the country’s electricity, but has become a source of uncertainty less than a decade after it went online. It has suffered more than a dozen outages in the first half of 2024, and more than 7,000 cracks have been discovered in funnels leading to the turbines.
When Coca-Codo Sinclair went offline last month due to heavy rains, power to power plants elsewhere depended on a single power line that failed, cutting off all of the country’s electricity. Ecuador had been warned of this risk by a blackout in 2004, but never implemented the recommended redundancies.
Climate change is affecting the distribution of electricity in many ways. Extreme heat is increasing the demand for cooling, while solar panels are decreasing in efficiency and supply is shrinking. High temperatures can cause lines to sag and transformers to overheat, leading to equipment failure and increased risk of fire.
As temperatures rise, grids will need to become more resilient, including storage to handle spikes in demand and disruptions to supply. John Pettigrew, head of the UK’s National Grid, has also called for a “super-supergrid” — an even higher-voltage network that connects countries.
In Mexico, blackouts are becoming more common as summers become hotter and drier and a booming economy pushes power grids to the brink. The problems are forcing companies to resort to expensive solutions to keep operations going, primarily by using diesel generators — a common practice in many countries with unstable electricity systems.
Power outages in the northern city of Chihuahua in June cut off electricity to water pumps, cutting off supplies to more than 70,000 people in two weeks. The increasing frequency of the outages means dairy farmers and cheese makers in the region are spending up to 50,000 pesos (about $2,700) a day on fuel for generators to power milking and refrigeration equipment, according to local news reports.
The blackouts in Mexico come after outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador chose to favor the domestic oil industry when it comes to energy investment, largely shutting down the electricity sector. The lack of spending is now hurting Mexico’s investment prospects as a lack of reliable power becomes a hindrance.
A heat wave in May caused outages in 21 states in Mexico, halting production at a Volkswagen AG plant in Puebla for four hours. The same plant suffered another outage in June.
To address the crisis, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist with a doctorate in energy engineering, has pledged $13.6 billion to build renewable energy capacity, gas-fired power plants and new transmission lines. But that’s less than half of the $38 billion needed to keep up with growing demand over the next five years, according to analysts’ estimates.
Grid tension is also a concern north of the border. U.S. grid operators have struggled to keep the lights on as extreme weather has exposed vulnerabilities in an aging power delivery system.
California suffered brief rolling blackouts during extreme summer heat waves in 2020 and 2022. And Texas’s power grid collapsed in February 2021 when a severe winter storm caused widespread outages of electricity generators, killing 246 people and causing more than $195 billion in property damage.
In countries that already had poor systems, climate change is exacerbating the problems. A $1.3 billion subsea link between Italy and Montenegro opened in 2019, but its capacity is already considered insufficient and a second one is under consideration.
The existing grid failed to prevent a major blackout in four Balkan countries, including Bosnia-Herzegovina and much of the Croatian coast, in June, affecting 4 million people. Consumption soared as temperatures hovered around 40C, causing one system after another to fail.
A forest fire in the Balkan region is believed to have contributed to the outage, which has disrupted cross-border electricity connections. This has affected several countries, including Albania. Albania relies on hydropower and is therefore vulnerable to increasingly hot and dry weather.
“We are still in a high-risk zone,” said Belinda Balluku, the country’s energy minister, adding that authorities in the region are coordinating their activities and doing everything they can to “keep the grid safe.”
–With assistance from Stephan Kueffner, Scott Squires, Rajesh Kumar Singh, Khalid Al Ansary, Faseeh Mangi, and Gresa Kraja.
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