The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency landed in Havana this morning, a move that underscores the growing global unease over energy security. The visit, unannounced and shrouded in diplomatic discretion, comes as Cuba’s energy infrastructure teeters on the brink of collapse, with rolling blackouts now affecting 80% of the island. For Britain, the implications are immediate and unsettling: a destabilised Caribbean poses direct risks to our energy supply chains and strategic interests.
Let us examine the physics of the crisis. Cuba relies on imported oil for 90% of its electricity generation, much of it from Venezuela. As Venezuela’s own production has plummeted from 3.2 million barrels per day in 2008 to less than 500,000 today, the flow has dwindled. The result is a cascading failure: power plants running at 30% capacity, grid frequency dropping below operational thresholds, and protective shutdowns triggering further blackouts. It is a positive feedback loop, one that engineers know well. A system stressed beyond its design limits does not fail gracefully. It shatters.
Why does this concern Britain? The Caribbean is a chokepoint for liquefied natural gas shipments from the Americas. The Panama Canal, through which 6% of global LNG transits, sits within a geopolitical storm. Cuba’s collapse could trigger a migration wave, redirect naval resources, and strain diplomatic relationships with key allies. Moreover, British energy companies maintain investments in Cuban offshore drilling blocks, assets now at risk of nationalisation or seizure in a desperate government’s attempt to maintain control.
The CIA chief’s presence signals Washington’s recognition that this is no longer a humanitarian crisis alone. It is a strategic vulnerability. Cuba’s energy poverty is a slow-motion collapse, but the consequences, like heat diffusion, spread outward. For Britain, already grappling with volatile wholesale electricity prices and a grid increasingly dependent on imported gas, the message is clear: our own resilience is being tested.
The solutions are not abstract. In the short term, emergency LNG shipments from the United States could stabilise Cuba’s grid, but political obstacles remain. The embargo, a relic of Cold War dynamics, prevents direct trade. However, waivers exist for humanitarian reasons. Britain could advocate for such measures, leveraging our diplomatic ties. In the medium term, distributed energy systems such as rooftop solar and battery storage offer a path away from centralised vulnerability. Cuba has abundant solar insolation, averaging 5.5 kWh per square meter per day, sufficient to power a nation. The technology is mature, the economics improving, and the need acute.
But time is a luxury we no longer possess. The warming planet accelerates these crises. Hurricanes, like the one that devastated Cuba’s solar farm in 2022, become more intense with each degree of warming. The biosphere does not negotiate. It responds to forcings, and we have been applying forcings for decades.
For the British public, the lesson is uncomfortable: energy security is not merely a matter of domestic policy. It is a web of dependencies, each node fragile. The CIA chief in Cuba is a reminder that the cracks in one system propagate to another. We can either retrofit our infrastructure for resilience, or we can wait for the next cascade.
The data are clear. The warnings are loud. The question is whether we will listen before the lights go out.
