Could Spain’s Electricity Meltdown Be Coming to a State Near You?

Could Spain’s Electricity Meltdown Be Coming to a State Near You?
A woman uses her phone's torch while she walks her dog during a massive blackout affecting the entire Iberian Peninsula on April 28, 2025. Miguel Riopa/AFP via Getty Images
Diana Furchtgott-Roth
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Commentary
Spain’s electricity supply went down last month due to cascading failures traced to faults in two solar plants in Spain’s southwest region, causing a blackout on the Iberian Peninsula. Americans should not be complacent because the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit international regulatory authority, has warned that it might happen in the United States.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth
Diana Furchtgott-Roth
Author
Diana Furchtgott-Roth is an economist who is adjunct professor of economics at George Washington University, where she teaches Transportation Economics. From 2019 to 2021, she was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Prior to joining USDOT, Furchtgott was Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of Treasury. She has been a senior fellow and director of Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. She previously served as chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor; chief of staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers; and deputy executive director of the Domestic Policy Council. She is the director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment and the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Furchtgott is also president of Furchtgott International and the author or coauthor of six books and hundreds of articles on economic policy, most recently “United States Income, Consumption, Wealth, and Inequality” (2020). She received her BA in economics from Swarthmore College and her M.Phil. in economics from Oxford University.