Cuba is struggling with devastating nationwide blackouts as the United States’ effective oil blockade strangles gas provides. But this disaster may additionally be accelerating a China-backed clear power revolution that’s been quietly unfolding in the Caribbean nation.
Cuba is at present pulling off one of the fastest solar revolutions on the planet, with help from China, based on information from the power suppose tank Ember. Imports of Chinese solar panels and batteries have soared over the previous yr and, with Chinese funding, Cuba has constructed dozens of solar parks.
The nation is nonetheless closely dependent on fossil fuels, however some specialists consider the intense US strain — with threats to take “control” of the island — could hasten Cuba’s path towards clear power. More renewables imply much less dependence on gas imports, serving to “remove this lever of coercion,” mentioned Kevin Cashman, an economist with the Transition Security Project, a US-UK analysis group.
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Others warning that Cuba’s power state of affairs is so bleak, its grid so damaged and its financial state of affairs so dire, that renewables can solely be a small half of the puzzle proper now. In the meantime, prolonged and disruptive blackouts proceed and most extraordinary Cubans have but to really feel the profit of the solar surge.
A clear power revolution “sounds nice on paper, but you’ve got to have the resources,” mentioned Ricardo Torres, a Cuban economist at the American University in Washington DC.
Oil is the spine of Cuba’s electrical energy system and most of it is imported. In the Nineteen Eighties, it got here primarily from the Soviet Union. When that fell in the Nineteen Nineties, Cuba switched to Venezuela, with a novel settlement the place Cuba despatched medical professionals to Venezuela in change for oil.
In early January, after the Trump administration captured Venezuela’s president, it reduce off this oil provide. Shortly after, imports to Cuba from different oil suppliers, together with Mexico, additionally dried up after the US threatened them with extra tariffs.
The impacts have been devastating. In March, the nation skilled three nationwide blackouts, slicing electrical energy for its roughly 10 million residents. Trash piled up in the streets, hospital surgical procedures have been restricted and folks burned wooden to cook dinner.
It is Cuba’s worst power disaster in a long time, however blackouts have been half of day by day life for a few years, as the nation’s growing older electrical energy infrastructure regularly buckles beneath the weight of a requirement it can not meet.
The disaster reached new ranges in 2024, with multiday nationwide blackouts. It marked a “turning point,” Torres mentioned, and was the yr solar began to take off, promoted by the Cuban authorities as a solution to power issues.
The velocity of the solar surge has been startling. China exported round $3 million of solar panels to Cuba in 2023; that determine rocketed to $117 million in 2025, based on Ember.
An enormous half of the nation’s clear power push is an agreement with China to open 92 solar parks throughout the nation by 2028, projected to deliver a complete of 2 gigawatts of solar energy on-line, sufficient to energy greater than 1.5 million houses.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel opened the first in February 2025 and there at the moment are round 50 on-line, dotted throughout the island. Cuba has put in round 1 gigawatt of solar in the final 12 months alone, Graham mentioned, “that does actually make a pretty meaningful dent in the in the power mix of a country the size of Cuba.”
Renewable power now makes up roughly 10% of Cuba’s electrical energy, up from round 3% in 2024. “It’s a really, really rapid boom,” Graham mentioned. The nation has pledged that determine will rise to a minimum of 24% by 2030.
The advantages of solar for Cuba are clear. Costs of clear know-how have plummeted in recent times and solar is comparatively quick to put in, Graham mentioned. The infrastructure lasts a long time and, as soon as arrange, wants solely sunshine.
There’s a profit for China, too, which fits past monetary, mentioned Jorge Piñon, a senior analysis collaborator at the University of Texas’s Energy Institute. It will “build goodwill, not only goodwill within Cuba but goodwill with the rest of Latin America,” Piñon mentioned.
Experts warn there are large hurdles to a broader solar revolution, nonetheless.
The surge could also be fast however solar energy is not but out there at scale. Cuba’s solar parks are small and scattered, Piñon mentioned. Solar energy is additionally solely generated when the solar shines, which means it can not meet peak night demand. Batteries can remedy this, and battery imports have soared, however Cuba nonetheless lacks utility scale storage, Piñon mentioned.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty, nonetheless, is price. A solar revolution received’t come low-cost. “You’re talking about a major overhaul of a system that is old, is broken, is tired,” Piñon mentioned.
It would price $8 billion for Cuba to generate round 93% of its electrical energy from renewables, which means it would not must import oil and fuel for electrical energy, based on an April analysis by Cashman. A 100% renewable electrical energy system would price $19 billion. “The first threshold breaks the main external lever of US coercion; the second completes the electricity transition,” the report concluded.
The billion-dollar query is who pays for it. “You have the state that’s broke, doesn’t have any money. You have the Cuban consumer that can’t afford it. So who’s left?” Piñon requested.
Cashman’s report suggests growth finance establishments will probably be key. But Cuba would wish to indicate it may pay again loans and this may take time, Piñon mentioned, “which Cuba does not have.”
There are limits to China’s assist, too. It’s unlikely to supply Cuba a “blank check,” Torres mentioned. Energy independence can be nice, he added, however Cuba “is a poor country in the middle of an economic crisis.”
For some Cubans the solar surge is already yielding advantages. At the nation’s first solar-powered charging station in the metropolis of Santa Clara, Cubans can cost something from cellphones and energy banks to electrical motorbikes.
“They have solved many problems for many people,” mentioned Yudelaimys Barrero Muñoz, in an interview with the Associated Press. She makes use of the station to cost her household’s electrical three-wheeler.
Yet for many, the benefits will not be but seen, Torres mentioned. He has purchased small solar modules for household in Cuba, however solar is out of attain for the majority who wrestle even to afford meals.
If you ask the common Cuban if they’ve seen any profit of the solar program of their day by day lives, Torres mentioned, “the likely answer is going to be no … Because the blackouts are now worse than they were a year ago.”
He believes renewable power should play a task in the nation’s electrical energy combine. But what Cuba wants isn’t simply cleaner electrical energy, however extra of it and quick, he mentioned. People want assured provide and it doesn’t matter to them whether or not it comes from the heaviest, most polluting oil or from solar, he added.
Others, nonetheless, see a extra constructive street forward for the fast deployment of renewables not solely in Cuba, but in addition elsewhere, as the prices of clear tech proceed to fall and geopolitical turbulence lays naked the perils of relying on fossil gas imports.
“No matter what happens to Cuba,” Cashman mentioned, “this is a clear signal to other countries that renewables are something that they need to focus on.”