The recent visit of CIA Director William Burns to Havana has cast an uncomfortable light on a global energy system under acute stress. While the official purpose of the trip remains opaque, the timing is instructive. Cuba is experiencing its worst energy crisis in three decades, with blackouts of up to 18 hours a day crippling the island. The underlying causes are a toxic mix of ageing infrastructure, lack of foreign investment, and the cascading effects of climate change. This is not merely a geopolitical sideshow. It is a warning to nations that rely on fragile, long-distance energy supply chains.
The United Kingdom, for all its rhetorical commitments to net zero, remains dangerously exposed. Our electricity grid is increasingly dependent on imported liquefied natural gas from volatile markets. Our wind farms, while crucial, cannot guarantee power when the weather fails. The energy transition, if mismanaged, becomes a vulnerability rather than a solution.
Consider the physics. A modern civilisation requires roughly 500 exajoules of primary energy annually. The infrastructure required to deliver this is the most complex system ever built. Yet we treat this system with the resilience of a house of cards. One drought in Panama can affect shipping lanes. One geopolitical spat can redirect fuel flows. One storm can knock out a major power line.
Cuba’s crisis is a case study in what happens when resilience is absent. The country’s power plants, many built in the Soviet era, run on imported oil that is now scarce. The result is a society where hospitals run on generators, food spoils in warehouses, and daily life grinds to a halt. This is not a failure of policy alone but a failure of thermodynamics. Energy cannot be created, only transformed. And if you cannot secure the inputs, you cannot secure the outputs.
For the UK, the lesson is clear: domestic energy security must be redefined. The current strategy relies too heavily on just-in-time delivery from distant partners. We must build buffers: strategic gas storage, battery farms, hydrogen caverns, and distributed microgrids. We must also accelerate the shift to sources that are less weather-dependent: geothermal, tidal, and advanced nuclear. These are not silver bullets but essential legs of a resilient system.
There is no time for complacency. The geophysical reality is that climate change will only increase the frequency of extreme weather events that stress energy infrastructure. The geopolitical reality is that the era of cheap, abundant energy is over. The two are converging. The UK must act now, not because of panic, but because the cost of inaction is measured in blackouts and lost lives.
The clock is ticking. The hour is late. But physics allows for intervention. We have the technology. We have the knowledge. We need the will.
