Global Grid Crises

While the United States deals with its own energy troubles, the rest of the world is facing problems as well. For many of these nations, it concerns their grids, but for each nation, the specific issue differs.

Ukraine

This unfortunately is expected, given what the nation is facing right now. As with any nation, energy is essential to its people’s way of life. So as Russia aims to inflict pain on Ukranians, it of course made the decision to attack Ukraine’s power grid. For now, the grid seems to be up, but 40 percent of the infrastructure is in rough shape. As a result, the Ukrainian government has instructed its citizens to charge everything they can because the grid could go down. 

Even if the grid does not completely collapse, the government has determined that they will need to enforce restrictions at certain hours. Even before the latest attack, some parts of Kyiv and other areas in Ukraine had trouble with receiving energy from the grid due to violence in the region. 

There are many grave costs in war. Although energy may not matter as much as death or assault, it still impacts people, and can be life or death when people are sick. Other countries have helped Ukraine with other types of aid, but energy can be harder since it has to come from on the ground infrastructure.

Hungary

Hungary has been the subject of controversy for a myriad of reasons lately. An area Hungary is seemingly more progressive in, is its widespread use of solar panels. But Hungary’s government has decided to prevent more people from using solar panels in the country. Hungary’s cited reason is that they do not have the capacity for more installations. Hungary wants more money from the European Union, to alleviate the costs of expanding the grid, but the European Union will not give Hungary the funds due to its concerns over Hungary’s rule of law. 

People can technically still install their own solar panels, but the government will not let them connect to the grid. If they cannot connect to the grid, the solar panels do not do much.

United Kingdom

Europe’s energy crisis from not receiving as much energy from Russia due to the war is going to negatively impact Britain. The United Kingdom’s national grid operators recently announced that when the winter evenings get cold enough, the use of heat might overwhelm the grid and cause “switch-offs” for up to three hours. They have qualified that this is unlikely, but at the same time they do want their citizens to be ready.

Interestingly, Britain does not actually receive gas from Russia, but it does import energy from other European nations. Since those countries are likely to be in an energy crunch, they might not have as much energy from Britain to import. Britain’s energy officials have encouraged citizens to cut down on their energy use, as winter gets closer.

Lebanon

Lebanon is facing an economic crisis that has devalued their currency. This has impacted their government’s ability to procure affordable energy for its people. As a result, there have been blackouts that occur as long as 23 hours every day.

In response, many people in Lebanon are trying to use solar power. This makes sense for them because the nation has 300 days with the sun shining. Lebanon’s government has tried to make receiving energy from renewable sources a goal, but they have not yet built up the infrastructure to follow through.

France

There are strikes going on at some of the nuclear plants in France. Energy officials have cautioned that this could cause major delays in restarting some nuclear reactors, which could then limit the energy available for heating in the winter.

Energy officials have already cut the amount of energy that they forecast will be available over the next few months. But it could get worse if the reactors do not restart soon. Fortunately for now energy use is decreasing in France because the weather has not been too harsh. But as winter arrives, energy use could just, which would put the nation in a perilous place.