The island of Cuba, a nation already straining under economic embargos and ageing infrastructure, has descended into a new phase of crisis. Rolling blackouts, now spanning weeks, have left residents of high-rise buildings in Havana trapped without water, light, or functioning lifts. This is not a weather event.
It is a systemic failure of a grid unable to meet demand in a warming world. The data are clear: Cuba’s electricity generation has fallen by 25% since 2019, while peak demand has risen by 12% due to air conditioning use during scorching summers. The oil-fired plants, many built in the Soviet era, operate at efficiencies below 30%.
When one unit fails, cascading failures follow. For the UK, the implications are stark. Cuba is a small node in global energy trade, but its crisis exposes a wider fragility.
The UK imports liquefied natural gas from the United States, a portion of which originates from Gulf of Mexico facilities. Any disruption to Caribbean energy trade routes, whether from hurricanes or geopolitical instability, could tighten an already strained global market. The UK’s own grid relies on imports for 20% of its gas during winter peaks.
The lesson from Havana is that infrastructure collapse does not need to be global to have global consequences. The biosphere does not care about national boundaries. When a power plant fails in Cuba, the ripple effects are felt in London trading floors.
The calm urgency of this moment requires that we see energy systems not as isolated puzzles but as interconnected components of a single, fragile canopy.
