Havana’s skyline, once a mix of colonial charm and Soviet-era brutalism, now flickers with the erratic rhythm of a failing grid. For residents in the city’s high-rises, the blackouts are not an inconvenience but a daily trial of endurance. The island’s energy crisis, born from ageing infrastructure, fuel shortages, and the suffocating weight of economic sanctions, has left millions without power for up to 12 hours a day. Elevators stall mid-floor, water pumps fall silent, and essential medical equipment for diabetics or dialysis patients becomes a gamble. The uncertainty, as one resident told me, is the worst part: you never know when the lights will go or return.
This is not a failure of engineering alone. Cuba’s power grid is a relic of the 1970s, starved of investment and maintenance. The country’s sole refinery, the Ñico López refinery in Havana, operates at a fraction of capacity. When Hurricane Ian struck in 2022, it exacerbated existing vulnerabilities. Today, blackouts are a symptom of a system pushed beyond its limits: demand outpaces supply by nearly 1,000 megawatts at peak hours. The government blames the US embargo, but the physics of energy production is indifferent to geopolitics. Turbines need fuel. Transmission lines need copper. And when those fail, entropy wins.
Compare this to the United Kingdom, where the National Grid has maintained a stability that would be the envy of any developed nation. Despite recent gas price spikes and the phasing out of coal, UK energy resilience has not buckled. Why? Three factors: diversification, storage, and smart management. The UK now draws power from wind, solar, nuclear, and interconnectors linking to France, Belgium, and Norway. A failure in one source is hedged by another. Battery storage facilities, like the one near Liverpool, can discharge 100 megawatts in seconds to smooth fluctuations. And the grid operator uses demand-side response: paying factories to reduce consumption at peak times rather than overloading lines.
But the comparison is not purely about infrastructure. It is about the social contract. In Cuba, blackouts erode trust. People hoard water, stockpile candles, and sleep on rooftops to escape suffocating heat. In the UK, a power cut is a rare event, met with swift repair crews and government compensation. The difference is a matter of investment and priorities. Cuba spends less than 1% of GDP on grid maintenance. The UK spends about 0.3% on grid resilience alone, but that figure is backed by a trillion-pound economy. The scale is incomparable. Yet the physics of electricity is universal: voltage drops when demand exceeds supply. Lights go out.
Climate change will only worsen these disparities. As global temperatures rise, demand for cooling soars. Cuba’s tropical climate means air conditioning is a necessity, not a luxury. But each unit draws more power, straining a grid that cannot stretch. The UK, meanwhile, faces its own challenges: electrifying heating and transport will double electricity demand by 2050. The government has pledged 40 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, but planning delays and grid connection queues threaten that target. Without storage and transmission upgrades, the UK’s resilience could fray.
The lesson from Cuba is this: energy resilience is not a luxury but a precondition for modern life. For the UK, maintaining that resilience requires relentless investment in diverse generation, smart grids, and backup systems. For the nations still battling blackouts, the path is steeper, but not impassable. Microgrids powered by solar and batteries, like those deployed in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, offer a template. Decentralised power can bypass vulnerable central grids. But such solutions require capital and political will. In the meantime, millions of Cubans will continue to live in the flicker, waiting for the lights to return.
Cuba’s crisis is a stark reminder of a metastable state. Right now, the UK stands solid. But the laws of physics and economics do not discriminate. Urgency, not complacency, must drive our energy strategy.
