Europe’s ageing electricity infrastructure is struggling to keep up with the demands of a rapidly decarbonising energy system, and last week’s massive blackout in Spain and Portugal has underscored the region’s vulnerability. While the precise causes of the outage are still under investigation, energy experts and grid operators are united in one message: Europe urgently needs to modernise and expand its power grids and storage capacity or risk more frequent and more damaging disruptions.

The blackout was the worst in the Iberian Peninsula in decades and highlights a growing problem. Much of Europe’s power grid was built in the 20th century, and nearly half of all power lines are now more than 40 years old. While renewable energy has surged in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this cleaner generation infrastructure has outpaced grid upgrades needed to handle the new energy flows.

Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, has revealed that it is working on the infrastructure design for a gas pipeline from Russia’s Sakhalin region in the Far East to China. This development is part of a broader agreement reached between Russia and China in early 2022 to increase…

India is accelerating efforts to finalize a phased trade agreement with the United States before July, when a new wave of reciprocal tariffs ordered by President Donald Trump is set to take effect. The emerging framework is being designed as a three-stage process, with an interim deal potentially sealed within weeks.

This renewed urgency reflects both economic pragmatism and geopolitical calculation. The Trump administration’s aggressive stance on trade—emphasizing “reciprocity” and threatening tariffs as leverage—has compelled India to move swiftly to secure concessions that can preserve access to the U.S. market while avoiding punitive measures.