Caribbean & Central America - June 2026

Massive, recurring power cuts have become a central feature of Cuba’s ongoing economic collapse. A new report by economist Ricardo Torres for the Cuba Study Group (CSG) explains the origins of the breakdown and why there are no quick fixes in sight.

CSG describes itself as a US-based, non-partisan research group formed by Cuban American business leaders. The report is titled ‘Without Power, there is no Country: A Special Report on Cuba’s Electricity Generation crisis’. The author is a Cuban economist at the American University in Washington DC, with a PhD from the University of Havana who has worked at Harvard and other US and European universities. One of the points that Torres underlines is the sheer size of the shortfalls which he describes as the “most severe in decades”. Power generation has slumped from 21,000 GWh in 2019 to 16,000 GWh in 2025, a fall of nearly 25%. He notes that the crisis “intensified markedly from mid-2024 onwards”. Daily generation deficits are now reaching one-third of system capacity.

Infrastructure is ageing, with most power plants now over 30 years old. Fossil fuel shortages, insufficient maintenance, and a lack of spare parts are the main factors forcing power cuts. Around 76% of power generation depends on fossil fuels, and more than half of that has to be imported. In theory this presents Cuba with a strong incentive to diversify into renewables. Yet, despite some progress in solar, very little has been achieved on this front: in 2024 only 3.6% of power came from renewable sources.

Investment in power sector infrastructure has been too low, with the government prioritising the tourism and hotels sector instead. Torres notes that several promising initiatives – wind farms, biomass projects, and solar parks - are facing long delays because of planning, financing, and management problems.

A case in point is the 101 MW, US$160m La Herradura complex, on the north coast of Las Tunas, billed as the country’s largest wind project and designed to use Chinese turbines. Launched in 2019, by 2025 the turbine foundations had still not been completed, with multiple problems, including cement and steel shortages, reported. Foreign investors in the US$60m Mariel Solar park (including Hive Energy of the UK) sought to exit after only one year because of foreign currency risks.

Torres makes it clear that political factors have played a part. After the US capture and extraction of Venezuela’s former president Nicolás Maduro (2013-2026) in January, that country halted its oil exports to Cuba, a major cause of current diesel oil shortages. US sanctions against Cuba are also playing a critically important part in the crisis.

More generally the report argues that energy reform will require broader economic reforms, including a more business-friendly operating environment, and credible payment mechanisms. Torres calculates that closing the energy deficit will require investment in new power plants totalling some US$6.6bn, beyond what Cuba can currently afford and before accounting for “substantial needs in transmission and distribution modernization, storage, and broader rehabilitation”. Such investment might be part of a ‘Marshall Plan’ for the island that some economists say is needed for a post-Castro Cuba.  

China

Last year China pledged to help Cuba build more than 92 solar parks by 2028, and a 17 March report by The Washington Post cites authorities as saying that over half of these projects have come online while Chinese exports of solar equipment to Cuba “skyrocketed” from about US$5m in 2023 to US$117m in 2025.