Green energy is proposed as the way of the future, but it may instead lead North Carolina to becoming more like Pakistan. What happens when you have the best and most advanced green energy policies in the world, but you still can’t turn the lights on?

Pakistan is reeling after a nationwide blackout put the entire country’s 220 million citizens in the dark and the cold due to fuel shortages. It’s a stunning collapse for a country that supports the world’s 5th largest population.

The Minister of Energy said in a statement that the system went down at 7:34 a.m. and caused “widespread breakdown in the power system.”

Workers were successfully able get a “limited number of grids” back up and running, mostly near the capital of Islamabad and the city of Peshawar, but most of the country remains without power.

Naturally, this is severely impacting everyday life. Beyond the shops, restaurants and other businesses impacted by the blackouts, hospitals and other lifesaving or sustaining services have also been impacted. 

“Due to the unavailability of generators, services are affected in health centers in suburbs of Quetta city,” the director of Balochistan’s health department said.

Thankfully, the country is currently not experiencing a deep freeze and the weather is scheduled to remain fairly temperate, which will minimize possible cold casualties.

But what does Pakistan and its energy collapse have to do with North Carolina? Despite its population, the Southwest Asian nation is clearly a developing country, how could a state in the U.S. even be a proper comparison?

Normally it wouldn’t be, but the foolish and sometimes reckless pursuit of green energy is the great equalizer. While developing nations, like Pakistan, have struggled for decades with infrastructure issues, many Western countries have decided to forgo reliability and structure and instead embrace the impractical, unsustainable and unreliability benefits of green energy.

That’s why countries like the United Kingdom are planning on paying their citizens in England, Scotland and Wales money to severely limit their electrical use at certain times to avoid blackouts. This isn’t because the infrastructure isn’t there. This crisis is entirely manmade. 

The United States, and even North Carolina, are following a similar path.

The John Locke Foundation’s Jon Sanders has been explaining in a series of articles how the state’s carbon plan could lead to unintended consequences. For example, natural gas has been offered as a bridge-fuel, but most related projects have run into problems due to environmental concerns and the push towards simply adopting green options. Nuclear energy, which is one of the most reliable green energy options, is seemingly rarely pursued.

But the plans that Gov. Roy Cooper has for the state go further than that. He wants the majority car sales to consist of electric vehicles by 2030, which is part of his overall zero-emission goal. It’s unclear that even if that goal is achievable, can the electrical grid handle all of the power stations needed to keep the vehicles on the road. 

Even if the off-shore wind turbine farm and massive solar panel farms are successfully implemented, they’ll still probably lack ability to generate the necessary energy the state needs. 

Despite the great advances in technology the Tar Heel State will make towards decreasing carbon emissions, is it really a step forward if the state spends part of the winter in the dark due to rolling backouts like Pakistan? Probably not.