The massive blackout that plunged Cuba into darkness for four days highlighted the communist island's failure to end its near-total dependance on ageing oil-fired power plants by transitioning to renewables, experts say. A decade after the Cuban government said it aimed to produce 24 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030 and in so doing reduce its dependence on oil imports it can ill-afford, the Caribbean island has made little progress. In 2022, Cuba got only 5 percent of its electricity from natural sources, the Environmental Defense Fund, a US-based NGO, noted in a recent report, a small increase from 2014, when renewables provided 4.
3 percent of its power. Analysts cite the nation's crumbling grid as one of the factors impeding Havana's progress on the renewables front, along with Cuba's ongoing economic crisis, the worst the country's faced since the fall of the Soviet Union -- Cuba's chief ally and financial backer -- in the early 1990s. Cuban economist Pedro Monreal also blamed the country's energy crisis on chronic underinvestment in energy infrastructure compared with what he called "excessive" spending on "little-used" tourism facilities.
Between 2020 and June 2024, tourism accounted for 38.9 percent of government spending, compared with only 9.4 percent on electricity, gas and water, he wrote on the social network X.
With several of the island's power plants dating back over 40 years, breakdowns have become more frequent. A drop in the supply of cheap .
