  The rich countries of Western Europe and its citizens benefited during at
least the last 30 years from an extraordinary stable electricity grid. This
stability was achieved by the european grid system and a large flexible and
reliable spare power plant capacity. This system allowed a continuous demand
growth during the past 10-20 years of up to a few % per year. However,
partially due to this overcapacity, no new large power plants have been
completed during the past 10-15 years. The obvious consequence is that the
reliable spare capacity has been reduced and that a further yearly demand
growth of 1-2% for electric energy can only be achieved if new power plants
will be constructed soon. Data from various European countries, provided by the
UCTE, indicate that the system stress during peak load times and especially
during particular cold winter days is much larger than generally assumed. In
fact, the latest UCTE data on reliable power capacity indicate that already
during the Winter 2007/8 only a few very cold winter days in Western Europe
could have resulted in very unpleasant supply problems during the early evening
peak load times in France and the neighboring countries.
  An analysis of the potential to build and operate new power plants
demonstrates that no short term solution, which allows a further continuous
1-2% consumption growth seems to exist. Thus, without any action from the
various governments in Europe to reduce the electricity demand in a serious
way, the risk of blackouts will increase dramatically in the near future.
Instead of simply waiting for the blackout disaster to happen, a few simple
short term political actions are suggested.
