What we need is prevention

After Berlin blackout - Kemfert calls for emergency power obligation for new buildings

The Berlin power outage affected around 45,000 households in winter. Claudia Kemfert, energy economist and head of the Energy, Transport, Environment Department at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), draws a clear conclusion from this: emergency power should become mandatory for new buildings. From their point of view, it is not so much the networks that fail as the preparation for an emergency. That is why she is calling for binding rules to cushion defaults in the future.

Kemfert says clearly: "What we need is prevention". Germany often only reacts when damage is visible, and that is exactly what gives crises too much space. In addition, the blackout shows that crisis routines are rarely practiced. This increases the risk that a local outage will spread quickly.


Ed Milivolt is likely to be paying attention to this wizard eco-argument - "it is not so much the networks that fail as the preparation for an emergency."

Sounds as if solar panels, a heat pump and a standby generator or a big battery could eventually become the minimum level of equipment for new buildings in Germany. Presumably further afield too - all new houses perhaps.

"What we need is prevention." Something like that, yes.