The undeclared visit of the CIA Director to Havana, first reported by diplomatic sources, underscores a strategic recalibration in the Caribbean as Cuba grapples with its most severe energy crisis in three decades. The United States is re-engaging with an adversary during a fuel supply collapse. The implications for the United Kingdom are direct and sobering.
Cuba’s grid, reliant on ageing Soviet-era thermal plants and volatile crude imports from Venezuela, has seen rolling blackouts of up to 16 hours daily. The island’s generation capacity has fallen below 40% of demand. This crisis is not an isolated failure but a symptom of a global energy system under thermodynamic stress. Fossil fuel dependency, when coupled with geopolitical isolation, produces non-linear collapses the UK should study carefully.
The CIA Director’s presence suggests Washington anticipates a humanitarian and political vacuum. For the UK, the lesson is granular but profound. The British electricity system still draws 40% of its gas from international LNG markets. A simultaneous supply disruption to multiple UK gas terminals, combined with a cold snap and low wind, would produce rolling blackouts comparable to those in Havana. The difference is one of speed, not kind.
Cuba’s crisis is a laboratory for what happens when the global energy transition fails to arrive in time. The UK has more options but less time than is commonly understood. The North Sea reserves are declining. The connections to Norway and the continent are vital but finite. Battery storage capacity today can cover roughly 30 minutes of national demand. For a week-long Dunkelflaute, the British grid relies entirely on gas reserves that sit at 85% utilisation. There is no margin.
The technical community has a term for this: ‘loss of load expectation’. The UK currently tolerates a theoretical risk of three hours per year. Computer models suggest this could rise to 20 hours by 2026 without new dispatchable capacity. Havana was modelled at similar levels five years ago. Now it is a permanent brownout.
The CIA visit forces a question the UK energy strategy has avoided. Does it have a workable plan for a sudden, extended loss of gas imports? The current framework relies on market signals that take days to respond. A single LNG cargo diversion from the United States, blocked by a major supply event in the Gulf of Mexico, would reduce UK gas availability by 10% within 48 hours. The emergency protocols are designed for two-week disruptions, not indefinite scarcity.
Cuba’s crisis also exposes a failure of networked redundancy. The UK’s electricity interconnectors to Europe are valuable but symmetrical. If a cold snap grips the entire continent, all parties draw from the same diminishing pool. The planned reforms to grid governance must include mandatory reserve margins, not just market incentives.
The physics of energy storage is unforgiving. Hydrogen storage is a decade from bulk viability. The UK’s strategic gas storage capacity is one of the lowest in Europe at under 10 days. Germany holds 90 days. The difference is not technological; it is political. The CIA’s arrival in Havana is a reminder that energy security is ultimately about relationships.
The UK has a choice. It can continue to rely on the benign functioning of international markets, or it can treat energy resilience as a core national security function. Cuba’s collapse is not inevitable for Britain, but the gap between the two systems is narrowing. The urgency is calm but real. The time to harden the grid is before the lights go out.
