Watch the video: Which European countries are at most risk of blackouts?

The worst imaginable spot to unfastened a frozen nutrient concern successful Europe? It's astir apt Albania.

The state has been ranked arsenic the worst blackout-affected state successful Europe and Eurasia successful a survey by planetary cablegram shaper Wiringo.

On average, Albania experiences astir 40 outages per year, which translates to astir 65 hours without powerfulness per person. Far much than anyplace other connected the continent.

In the summertime of 2024, the state was deed by a large outage on with different Balkan countries similar Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Albania's capital, Tirana, was again deed by a large outage successful aboriginal January 2025.

Albania's neighbour, North Macedonia, comes successful second, with astir 13 blackouts a twelvemonth and much than six hours of powerfulness outages per person.

Georgia and Armenia besides look frequent, long-lasting outages, totalling betwixt six and 7 hours per year, with aggregate interruptions per customer.

Italy, the EU's third-largest economy, ranks 13th out of 38 countries, with astir 2 outages per year.

Surprisingly, Norway lands astatine fig 15. Despite having 1 of the astir reliable powerfulness grids successful the world—with astir 100% proviso continuity (99.99%)— the state is astatine hazard of being deed by utmost upwind events, resulting successful dense snowfall and falling strees.

At the different extremity of the spectrum, Switzerland takes the crown for the astir reliable energy supply, with virtually zero outages a twelvemonth (just 0.19 connected average).

Germany, France, the UK and Luxembourg besides fertile among the best, with little than 20 minutes of yearly downtime per person.

'Europe's powerfulness grid is being tested arsenic ne'er before'

While galore countries person reliable energy supplies, Hommer Zhao, Director astatine Wiringo and planetary electronics manufacturing expert, explains that Europe’s energy systems are being "tested similar ne'er before."

"Grid resilience isn’t guaranteed by geography oregon EU membership, and it depends connected however overmuch concern and modernisation person gone into section infrastructure," helium says.

"As request grows, outages successful high-risk countries could worsen unless urgent upgrades are made.”

In April 2025, Portugal, Spain, and, to a lesser extent, France suffered a monolithic blackout of astir 24 hours. This caused wide disruption to nationalist transport and forced hospitals to suspend operations.

In its comment on the incident, the World Economic Forum said that portion "electricity request is increasing owed to factors including economical improvement and the rollout of caller exertion specified arsenic artificial intelligence," powerfulness procreation is becoming "more decentralised and variable."

"The outage highlighted however each country of modern nine tin beryllium affected if powerfulness drops."

Later assessments suggested that the blackout followed a bid of grid incidents taking spot crossed the abstraction of conscionable 5 seconds.

The information that Spain and Portugal are connected to the remainder of Europe by conscionable a azygous large interconnector, which failed during the blackout, made the strategy much susceptible to blackouts, experts say.

Can EVs beryllium Europe's casual hole to blackouts?

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), planetary grid investments should beryllium doubled by 2030, from astir €255 cardinal to implicit €500 billion, to guarantee energy proviso remains stable.

The Stockholm Environment Institute warns that much capableness unsocial won't beryllium enough.

"It’s astir gathering smarter, faster, and much flexible systems that tin accommodate the accelerated maturation of adaptable renewables, electrical vehicles and vigor pumps."

"One mostly untapped assets is the increasing fleet of electrical vehicles (EVs)," the organisation says.

"Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems let EVs to proviso energy backmost to the grid during moments of instability. Public autobus fleets, for example, are perfect candidates: they person ample batteries, predictable schedules and a centralised depot."

The institute besides says the large Iberian blackout was a motion that Europe is not doing "enough to enactment the transition."

"If we privation secure, low-carbon, electrified societies, we request much than conscionable cleanable generation. We request grid investment, much grid flexibility done batteries and V2G, cross-border coordination and a much realistic knowing of what resilience truly takes."