As Cuba’s grid fails, solar power becomes a lifeline » Yale Climate Connections

As Cuba’s grid fails, solar power becomes a lifeline » Yale Climate Connections
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The Trump administration’s fuel blockade against Cuba has resulted in widespread power outages, gas shortages, garbage in the streets, and a humanitarian crisis – but also a surge in solar installations.
In 2025, the Caribbean nation produced 10% of its electricity from renewable sources, a jump from 3.6% in 2024,
according
to Rosell Guerra Campaña, director of the Ministry of Renewable Energy at Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines.
Cuba’s increased reliance on renewables is driven by dire necessity.
Since President Donald Trump’s January 2026 executive order imposing tariffs on countries that supply oil to Cuba, gas and diesel supplies have grown sparse, forcing many residents to stay home.
“The streets feel like a ghost town,” said Michael Galant, a senior research and outreach associate at the
Center for Economic and Policy Research
, who visited Cuba for work in March.
Galant described the situation as “extremely dire” and “visibly worse” than what he saw in previous visits.
Trash trucks can’t operate without fuel, so garbage is piling up on city streets and creating a breeding ground for the mosquitoes that spread diseases like dengue and chikungunya. The alternative is to burn the trash, polluting the air.
U.N. experts
condemned
the fuel blockade in February.
“The U.S. executive order imposing a fuel blockade on Cuba is a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order,” they said.
Residents in La Habana and Morón, in the middle of the main island of Cuba, have expressed their frustration by banging
pots and pans
at all hours.
The U.S. capture in January of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has intensified the crisis, as Venezuela was previously one of the primary suppliers of oil to Cuba. In February, Trump allowed the
resumption
of some Venezuelan oil imports, but that has not halted the energy crisis. Other countries that used to supply oil have
cut Cuba off
under the threat of U.S. tariffs.
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A crumbling grid and worsening blackouts
Cuba is
heavily dependent on oil
for generating electricity for its fragile grid. With oil supplies curtailed, power outages sometimes exceed 20 hours a day. In March, there were
three major blackouts
across the nation.
Raúl Rodríguez Rodríguez, director of the
Center for Hemispheric and U.S. Studies
at la Universidad de La Habana, said that an alarming number of hospitals have been canceling surgeries – including a planned operation for his own wife – as a result of the blackouts. In March,
CNN reported
that tens of thousands of Cubans were awaiting surgeries that had been delayed by power outages.
Cuba’s economic situation has been precarious since the U.S. imposed an embargo in 1962 after Fidel Castro took power. Decades later, the Obama administration loosened some sanctions, but Trump resumed hard-line policies during his first term.
“It is designed to attack Cuba’s vulnerabilities,” Rodríguez Rodríguez said in Spanish. “It has a double significance: an economic and humanitarian aspect.”
It’s not just the blockade that is causing the energy crisis.
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Rodríguez Rodríguez compared the archipelago’s electrical grid to Frankenstein: made up of a series of components from different countries, companies, and time periods. The result is that repairing the system is extremely difficult. Some of the companies involved in creating the grid no longer exist or are not allowed to do business with Cuba as a result of long-term U.S. policy.
The grid’s vulnerability to extreme weather was highlighted by Hurricane Melissa, which hit Cuba in 2025 as a slow-moving Category 2 storm, causing widespread power outages.
“The problem comes from two things: the state has very few resources, and the maintenance of the grid,” Rodríguez Rodríguez said.
Jorge Piñon, a
senior research collaborator
at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas in Austin, said he believes that the situation is a little more complicated than that. He said that the Cuban government has the means to update its energy grid – it just hasn’t.
Piñon pointed to the luxury hotel
Torre K-23
in Havana, a 42-story, Cuban-financed hotel that opened in 2025 only to be shut down recently. Why couldn’t the money invested in the luxury hotel have been spent on rebuilding the grid, Piñon wondered?
Piñon compared the grid to a terminally ill patient who became so largely due to government mismanagement.
“It’s going to take a lot of years, it’s going to take a lot of money,” he said, for the electrical grid to function correctly. “It takes time. It takes effort.”
Can solar solve Cuba’s power crisis?
Still, solar is ramping up at unprecedented levels.
On Feb. 10, Cuba generated more than
800 megawatts
from solar energy for the first time, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mines. The next day, it generated 900 megawatts.
With
34 solar
farms, the country aims to produce 15% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2026.
Rodríguez Rodríguez said that he has seen a surge in renewable microgrids, which are small-scale power grids made up of solar panels or wind turbines and batteries. He’s also seen a rise in the installation of cheap Chinese solar panels – which are not caught in the crosshairs of tariffs – at medical clinics, hospitals, and private businesses.
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The growth is made possible by a dramatic decrease in the cost of clean-energy systems. The cost of solar panels has
fallen 90%
in the past decade, and the price of combined solar and battery systems has fallen significantly as well.
Although sanctions and logistics make the costs higher, the fact that the Cuban government owns the majority of land in the country simplifies the process of installing solar parks.
“It’s pretty extraordinary,” said London-based economist Kevin Cashman of Cuba’s solar power boom.
But Piñon said solar is not yet being implemented at the scale that is needed. Nor is it reliable enough to supply the majority of energy to the country.
“You need size, you need bulk,” he said.
And many Cubans still can’t afford home solar, Cashman said. The country also needs outside financing to repair its grid, but many countries are worried about running afoul of U.S. sanctions.
new report
by Cashman argues that international investment in Cuba’s renewable capacity is necessary to free the country from U.S. coercion. An investment of $8 billion would enable Cuba to generate 93% of its electricity from renewables, the report says, with $19 billion needed to achieve a fully renewable power system. “For decades, the U.S. has imposed an embargo that severely limits Cuba’s trade with foreign entities,” Cashman wrote.
“The case for solar in Cuba is so compelling, and what the U.S. is doing is so cruel,” he said. “It is creating a humanitarian crisis on purpose.”
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As Cuba’s grid fails, solar power becomes a lifeline
by Pearl Marvell, Yale Climate Connections
April 16, 2026
Pearl Marvell
Pearl Marvell is a multimedia storyteller with over a decade of experience as a writer, reporter, photographer, and producer. She earned her undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Puerto...
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