02389-25 Grant v The Daily Telegraph

Summary of Complaint

1. Robert Grant complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that The Daily Telegraph breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “Spain’s blackouts caused by green energy”, published on 19 June 2025.

2. The article – which appeared on page 19 - reported on the Spanish Government’s report into the circumstances surrounding electricity blackouts in April 2025. The sub-headline read: “Glut of solar power sent prices plunging, which triggered a mass switch off, official report says”. The article went on to report that “Spain’s disastrous national blackout was triggered by solar farms switching off in response to plummeting power prices, an official investigation has found”. It said the report “found that Spain’s solar farms were generating so much power on April 28, a particularly sunny day, that prices became ‘negative’ – meaning there were no profits to be made in operating them. Plunging prices triggered a mass switch-off which sent voltage and frequency fluctuations cascading across the national grids of both Spain and Portugal. Back-up systems meant to guard against such fluctuations were not in effect. This caused blackouts that left more than 60m people across the Iberian peninsula without power, the Spanish government report concluded.”

3. The article said the report:

“described how the power cut, which occurred shortly after midday, had been preceded by unusual voltage fluctuations across the Spanish grid from roughly 10am onwards. Those fluctuations correlated with abrupt reductions in solar generation, which were probably driven by solar farms switching off as wholesale power prices fell. This coincided with other, wider changes such as an abrupt drop in the amount of power being exported to France. While the solar switch-off appears to be the immediate trigger for the blackouts, investigators blamed the country's grid operator Redeia for failing to calculate the correct mix of energy generation needed to prevent a blackout. Redeia disputed that finding, saying voltages had always been within set limits. Investigators also attributed a portion of blame to power plant operators. Some had been paid to keep nuclear and gas-fired power stations in operation to stabilise the system but had turned down those plants too in order to save money.”

4. The article quoted Spain's energy minister, who reportedly said “power plants ‘should have controlled voltage and, moreover, many of them were economically remunerated to do so. They did not absorb all the reactive power that was expected’". The article also reported “Redeia rejected any blame and said it was the fault of power plants” and that its operations chief had said: "Had conventional power plants done their job in controlling the voltage there would have been no blackout."

5. The article also appeared online, in substantively the same format, under the headline “Renewable energy to blame for Spain’s blackouts”. This version was published on 18 June 2025.

6. The complainant said that the article inaccurately reported on the findings of the Spanish Government’s report, in breach of Clause 1. He said the correct position was that a series of voltage disruptions were not managed by a large number of thermal power plants, which caused disconnections, and a collapse of the system. He said the government report did reference solar power ramping down on the day the blackouts began, seemingly in response to negative prices, but it did not place the blame for the blackout on this ramp. He said the report explained that the generation mix was not a key factor in sensitivity to voltage issues.

7. The publication did not accept a breach of the Code, and said the article accurately reported on the Spanish Government’s report. It said the basis of the factual findings of the Spanish report was that renewables caused, and were to blame for, the “triggering” of the process which ultimately resulted in the chain reaction which led to the blackout. It said that, while other factors played a part in causing the blackouts, it did not follow that it was inaccurate to report the “hugely important” triggering role of renewables in the blackout.

8. The publication said it had taken care over the accuracy of the article and had relied on the Spanish report in question, which it provided.

9. The publication said the longer-term context for the blackout was the energy transition in Spain away from fossil fuels to low-carbon sources of energy, such as wind and solar farms. It said this transition changed the character, operation and management of the transmission grid.

10. The publication added that Spain obtained a significant portion of its energy from wind and solar farms. It said these produce direct currents, which are converted to alternating current using electronic devices, and can be switched off quickly and are intermittent. This, it said, meant that energy output varies sharply on short time scales in a way that transmission networks were not originally built for. This could lead to rapid changes in voltage and frequency – and therefore, for modern grid operators, there is a challenge to manage this intermittency, and the challenge is compounded by market signals. If supply exceeded demand, prices could go ‘negative’ – meaning generators must pay the grid to take the power they are generating. It said, if this happened, there would be an incentive for the generators that can switch off quickly – such as solar and wind farms – to do so.

11. Turning to the Spanish government report, the publication highlighted the following:

“In particular, looking at the period between 10:30 and 11:10 in the morning, it can be seen in Graph 23 that the rise in voltages that occurs at the time coincides with a drop in generation, in this case solar generation, probably due to market signals, as indicated below, and which is accompanied by a drop in exports due to a change in the programme (which become negative, ie imports from France begin). In other words, tensions rise when solar production is suddenly reduced, coinciding with a change in the interconnection exchange programme.”

12. The publication said Spanish solar generators were using their inherent ability to rapidly switch off their output to respond to market signals. It said, when prices went negative, they switched off en masse - causing overall generation levels to fall below demand. The consequent raised voltages and frequency oscillations were a growing feature of the Spanish grid through the morning before the blackout. The report traced the blackout to the switching off of a single solar plant in Badajoz. It said this was the final trigger for an event that had been building throughout the morning.

13. The publication said, at 12:03pm on the first day of the blackouts, the plant in Badajoz began to produce major atypical oscillations in voltage – which triggered reactions across the grid. There were further oscillations identified at 12:16pm and 12:19pm. The oscillations led to mitigation measures, which themselves had the side-effect of increasing voltages. Reduction in generation from renewable energy sources put double pressure on voltage. It noted the Spanish report referenced the possible consequence of this: "Each of these disconnections whatever their nature brings the system closer to a point where, in the absence of systems and tools to absorb sufficient reactive energy, it becomes a ‘point of no return’ by initiating a ‘chain reaction’".

14. The publication said a "chain reaction" then occurred, in which renewables were crucially involved. At 12:32pm, voltages began to increase through the transmission network. This itself led to a loss of generation from renewables. At 12:33pm, a substation in Badajoz serving solar farms tripped, removing 582 M W from the system – as did a solar farm in the area, removing 145 MW. In under a second, more solar and wind farms disconnected, removing 1,150 MW. By then about 2 GW of generation had been removed - this created a voltage surge and frequency changes which tripped out substations and generators across Spain and Portugal, leading to the blackout.

15. The publication said the Spanish report concluded that the large amplitude voltage variations in short periods of time throughout the morning ultimately led to the blackout. The Spanish report further concluded: "The disconnection of generation contributed to an increase in voltages, propagating overvoltage conditions and contributing to start the ‘chain reaction’ by disconnecting, in turn, new generation due to overvoltage. The disconnection of largescale generation due to overvoltage led to a drop in system frequency, which in turn subsequently caused the disconnection of some generation groups by underfrequency".

16. The publication said the fact that the blackout was triggered by renewables, as indicated by the findings of the Spanish report, did not mean that there were not any other factors at play. It said the article also reported on these factors, as it reported on: "[b]ack-up systems meant to guard against such fluctuations were not in effect"; referred to coinciding abrupt drop in the amount of power being exported to France; the failure by the Spanish Grid Operator Redeia to calculate the correct mix of energy generation needed to prevent a blackout; and the failure of conventional power plant operators to step up to stabilise the system as they ought to have done, absorbing reactive power. It said the article made clear Redeia rejected any blame and it was not clear the blackout could have been avoided by mitigating measures in any event.

The complainant said the publication’s defence did not stand up to proper technical comparison with the Spanish report. He provided several reports which he considered contained a more balanced summary of the events which led to the blackout.

The complainant said any reference to renewable energy “causing” the black out was erroneous based on the publicly available information released to date. He said as renewable energy was operating on that day, then by definition it was “part of the cause”, but so was gas, nuclear and the computer systems that manage the market and grid.

17. The complainant said the Spanish report recommended that market rules be changed to allow renewables to be remunerated for taking part in dynamic voltage control. He said the blackout would have been avoided if the renewables had been in this mode.

18. The complainant also highlighted an excerpt from the Spanish report which said: “In the meetings that have been held with different system agents, there has been a high degree of agreement on the complexity of both the analysis and the probable causes of the peninsular zero voltage, most likely due to a combination of conditions that brought the system to the point where it triggered a ‘chain reaction’ of overvoltage, and no ‘single failure’ has been identified that could explain the system failure on its own.”

Relevant Clause Provisions

Clause 1 (Accuracy)

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.

ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and — where appropriate — an apology published. In cases involving IPSO, due prominence should be as required by the regulator.

iii) A fair opportunity to reply to significant inaccuracies should be given, when reasonably called for.

iv) The Press, while free to editorialise and campaign, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.

Findings of the Committee

19. The Committee noted that the publication and the complainant had differing interpretations of what the Spanish Government’s report found to be the cause of the blackout. The Committee wished to make clear it was not in a position to make a finding on what caused or triggered the blackout, and that its role was to determine whether the newspaper had accurately reported on the findings of the Spanish Government’s report.

20. The Committee noted the context of the article: it was a news item summarising the Spanish report for a lay audience. It was not, and did not purport to be, an exhaustive list of all the factors set out in the Spanish report. The newspaper was entitled to focus on what it considered to be the important factors, and to summarise the report in a manner which would be understandable to a lay audience – provided the Code was not otherwise breached.

21. The article reported that the Spanish report concluded that Spanish reliance on renewable energy was the trigger for the events of 28 April. The article set out its basis for this position, where it stated the blackout “was triggered by solar farms switching off in response to plummeting power prices, an official investigation has found” and “the solar switch-off appears to be the immediate trigger for the blackouts”. The newspaper provided several excerpts of the Spanish report which the Committee considered tallied with the article’s brief explanation of what the report had said was to blame. Given this, the Committee did not consider that it was inaccurate to summarise the report as having found that green energy had “caused” the blackout.

The complainant had noted that several factors were at play on the day that the blackouts began, and that there were many contributing factors. The article acknowledged other contributing factors to the blackout - for example, it reported that “investigators blamed the country's grid operator Redeia for failing to calculate the correct mix of energy generation needed to prevent a blackout” and “[i]nvestigators also attributed a portion of blame to power plant operators.” The article did, therefore, make clear that there were multiple contributing factors. At any rate, the newspaper was entitled to focus on the contributing role renewable energy played in the blackouts.

22. The Committee did not, therefore, consider the article to be an inaccurate, misleading, or distorted summary of the Spanish government report, and there was no breach of Clause 1.

Conclusions

23. The complaint was not upheld.

Remedial action required

24. N/A

Date complaint received: 19/06/2025

Date complaint concluded by IPSO: 18/12/2025