After the recent outages in Spain etc, which brought commerce to a standstill, I hear the EU has been crowing that if we had the CBDC this wouldn't be a problem, as it will work without electricity.
I don't really believe that CBDCs work without electricity because it relates not only to CBDCs themselves but also to merchant operations and user payments that all need power supplies as well as internet connection.
A world without electricity and Internet connection are a dead world in modern era and electricty is very important because without it, there is no operation of merchants and many payment infrastructures. With Internet connection, you can have it with cable, non-cable connections or with Satellite Internet but the bottom line is you need Electricity first.
Alternatives for traditional internet
[Total privacy Bitcoin]: off grid Transactions LoRaWan/goTenna.They only mention temporary power outages and internet outages, and they say their CBDC can work well in such cases.
According to reports and updates from the ECB, there will be two versions of CBDC, online and offline. To use CBDC offline, users will need a battery-powered smart card or smartcard, or they can also use their smartphone to transact via NFC.
It can be said that their CBDC can actually function without internet and electricity but it can only function for a certain period of time. Because after all all those devices run on electricity and they need to be powered up to keep working so OP's statement is incorrect.