As Cuba descends deeper into its worst blackout crisis in decades, the stark contrast between its fragile energy infrastructure and the United Kingdom’s evolving resilience model becomes impossible to ignore. The Caribbean nation, plagued by ageing Soviet-era power plants, fuel shortages, and natural disasters, now faces a systemic collapse of its electrical grid. Over 10 million Cubans have endured daily blackouts of up to 12 hours, a humanitarian emergency that underscores the vulnerabilities of centralised, fossil-fuel-dependent energy systems.
Cuba’s predicament is not merely a consequence of geopolitical isolation or economic hardship. It is a physical reality rooted in thermodynamics and infrastructure decay. The island’s power generation relies on eight large thermal plants, some over 50 years old, operating at below 40% efficiency. When Hurricane Ian struck in 2022, it damaged transmission lines, but the real failure lay in the inability to dispatch decentralised backup generation. The grid, like a single-threaded filament, snapped when stress concentrated at its weakest points.
Against this backdrop, the United Kingdom’s approach to energy resilience offers a blueprint, not a panacea. The UK, once a monarch of coal, has gradually transformed its energy mix through a combination of market signals, regulatory pressure, and technological adoption. The result is a more distributed grid. As of 2024, over 30% of the UK’s electricity comes from renewable sources, with a significant share from offshore wind and rooftop solar. But the critical factor is resilience: the capacity to maintain function despite shocks.
The UK National Grid’s “Operating Margin” – the spare capacity to meet unexpected demand or generation loss – averaged 8% in 2023, compared to Cuba’s negative margin during peak hours. Furthermore, the UK’s deployment of battery storage has grown exponentially, from negligible levels in 2017 to over 3 GW in 2024. These batteries can respond within seconds, smoothing out fluctuations from intermittent renewables and acting as shock absorbers. Cuba, in contrast, has less than 100 MW of storage, primarily in pumped hydro, which is insufficient for a grid of its scale.
Transmission and distribution infrastructure also tells a tale of divergence. The UK invests heavily in underground cabling, smart grids, and dynamic line rating, which adjusts capacity based on weather conditions. Cuba’s grid, by contrast, is exposed: overhead lines susceptible to hurricanes, with minimal automation. When a fault occurs, repairs require manual intervention over vast distances. The result is a system that is brittle, not ductile.
Yet the UK is not without its own challenges. The 2021 price cap crisis, triggered by volatile gas prices, exposed the dangers of over-reliance on imported fossil fuels. The British model now emphasises “energy trilemma” balancing: affordability, security, and sustainability. The strategy includes interconnectors with Europe, which provide bidirectional flow and mutual support. Before the pandemic, the UK imported up to 10% of its electricity via interconnectors, a buffer that prevented blackouts during cold snaps. Cuba, an island with no interconnectors, must be completely self-reliant.
Crucially, the UK has also promoted demand-side response programs, where large consumers voluntarily reduce load during peaks. This is not just a technological fix; it is a social contract. The UK’s National Grid ESO offers incentives for households to shift energy use away from peak hours. Cuba, with state-controlled energy allocation, lacks such market mechanisms.
But can Cuba adopt a British-style resilience model? The required capital outlay is immense: modernising the grid would cost tens of billions, a sum far beyond the country’s current GDP. Technical expertise is scarce, and political stability remains uncertain. However, small steps are feasible. Solar microgrids have already been installed in remote Cuban communities, providing limited but reliable power. Scaling these with battery storage could create islands of resilience within the larger failing system. The International Energy Agency estimates that integrating renewable microgrids could reduce blackout durations by 60% in rural areas.
The broader lesson is clear: energy resilience is not solely a function of wealth but of intentional design. Britain’s path has been incremental, driven by climate policy and market forces. For Cuba, the path may require international cooperation and a shift from centralised dogma to distributed pragmatism. As the atmospheric carbon concentration reaches 420 ppm, the window for such transitions narrows. Cuba’s blackouts are a warning signal to all nations clinging to outdated energy paradigms. The physics of entropy does not negotiate.
Dr. Helena Vance, Science & Climate Correspondent
