The Director of the CIA landed in Havana this morning, a rare visit that underscores the severity of Cuba’s unfolding energy catastrophe. The island, already reeling from decades of infrastructure decay and tightened sanctions, now faces a near-total collapse of its electrical grid. Blackouts lasting 18 hours or more have become routine, crippling hospitals, water pumps, and cold storage for food and medicine.
Cuba’s energy mix relies heavily on imported oil, primarily from Venezuela, whose own production has plummeted. Emergency shipments from Russia and Mexico have proven insufficient. The country’s thermal plants, many built in the Soviet era, operate at less than 40% capacity due to lack of maintenance and spare parts. Solar and wind installations, while growing, account for less than 5% of generation.
The physics of this crisis is straightforward: a system cannot output more energy than it takes in. When generation falls below the minimum threshold for grid stability, cascading failures become inevitable. Engineers call this “brownout cascade” - a phenomenon where voltage collapses propagate faster than control rooms can react. For Cubans, it means a life of darkness, spoiled medicine, and stalled transport.
The CIA director’s agenda remains unconfirmed, but analysts point to three possible tracks: assessing migration pressures, evaluating the risk of a complete regime legitimacy crisis, or brokering behind-the-scenes energy aid. The United States has maintained a trade embargo, yet humanitarian exemptions exist for food and medicine. Fuel, however, is excluded.
Historical analogues are grim. When Puerto Rico lost power for 11 months after Hurricane Maria, the death toll exceeded 4,600 from indirect causes. Cuba’s population is 11 million and its grid is more fragile. The World Health Organization has warned of a resurgence of waterborne diseases as refrigeration fails. Insulin stocks last weeks without cooling.
The technological solution is obvious but capital intensive: a distributed microgrid architecture running on solar plus battery storage. Cuba has high solar irradiance and abundant land. But the upfront cost for a nation with a GDP of $100 billion and no access to international capital markets is prohibitive. Even with donated panels, installation and maintenance are bottlenecks.
There is a cruel irony here. Cuba spends billions importing oil it cannot afford, while the sun beats down for free. The transition to renewables would not only stabilise the grid but free up hard currency for healthcare and imports. Yet politics and poverty conspire to maintain the status quo.
The CIA visit may be the first real signal that Washington is finally willing to decouple humanitarian assistance from geopolitical posturing. Or it may be a reconnaissance mission for what comes next. Either way, the clock is ticking. Each day without power costs lives. The biosphere does not care about abstract conflicts. It only responds to physics.
For the Cuban people, the night is long and getting longer. The rest of the world watches, but the only action that matters is the one that restores electrons to wires. History will judge whether we moved fast enough. We never do.
