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China is building 75 solar parks in Cuba, and the island’s power crisis is becoming an infrastructure experiment (www.vozpopuli.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/energy@slrpnk.net
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[–] 62 points 4 months ago (1 child)

Another great example of why energy independence is a key part of national security. While I'm sure China is only too happy to receive the publicity and leverage, Cuba being resistant to blockades by a certain belligerent neighbor is immense.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Cuba has been under siege since the 1920s with the mob using Cuban molasses to make booze, then they turned Cuba into Las Vegas before Las Vegas was a thing. There were very good reasons for the revolution.

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    • [–] 94 points 4 months ago (36 children)

    Trevor Noah’s latest pod discusses China. Apparently infrastructure for others is their new influence/weapon.

    Trump killed our global soft power and China is stepping into that space.

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  • [–] 59 points 4 months ago (21 children)

    China has been indebting a lot of Africa building stuff all over the place longer than Trump has been around, doesn't get talked about very much. I only knew because I watch a few full time travel vloggers.

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  • [–] 40 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Yeah China has been funding massive infrastructure expansion around the world for over a decade. All across Africa and Asia.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    i have trouble thinking of infrastructure improvements and expansion as a bad thing. Damn that's an effective strategy.

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago

    Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

    Convince a man to let you build a fishing pier with exclusive fishing rights in his pond in exchange for giving him a fish every week, and you've got a customer for life.

    In reality, China doesn't need to be so crass as to demand exclusive rights. The mere fact that these are Chinese panels with Chinese hardware means Cuba is going to be dependent on China for as long as they aren't willing to throw out a massive chunk of their infrastructure. As long as this move comes with some change to the material situation that makes Cuba pay China back and then some, China gets richer from it.

    Capitalist corporations and nations have done the same for centuries. European colonial empires kept advanced manufacturing in Europe so the colonies couldn't become independent without a massive reduction in industrial capacity. Because of this many former colonies are still economically dependent on Europe and/or the US. China is simply coming in and offering them a better deal.

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago*

    It’s modern colonialism to some extent, the USA does/did similar, you ingratiate the people to you so you can exploit the resources OR geography OR populace somehow.

    It’s not always evil. It’s rarely ever altruistic.

    One way this is done is “we’ll build the bridge to get to the other side of this thing if we’re granted mineral rights for the next LONG TIME” and upfront you get the bridge but the backside is you lost the resource. For the people who were never going to reap the reward of resource … but now they have a bridge … win/win?

    This is a downside to these sorts of things. Again, not always evil though.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Also when you travel in central or south America you see more and more infrastructure by the Chinese. Still a lot less than Africa, but China is taking investments into ressource rich countries seriously.

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  • [–] 34 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Well, the west has been indebting them without infrastructure build up, so...

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  • [+] -6 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    So...

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    So!

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    Oh I thought you were gonna tankie like "therefore china good!"

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    They have quite a lot of space to step in as Russia also did kill their soft power.

    Everything seems to benefit China.

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    New? They've been doing it for a very long time now. It's way cheaper to provide infrastructure to win good will than it is to fight them. And by getting them the infrastructure they can start producing goods for you. China has been outsourcing to Africa for a very long time now. Also just pillaging their resources.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    pillaging their resources.

    Employing locals and raising the median income. Then providing stable power infrastructure which previously did not exist. While USA slashed USAID.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Not always. Sometimes they offer to build the infrastructure to help you mine your resources then snatching up almost all the profit leaving your country and its people still very poor. This is how and why China controls the world's rare earth magnets and other more exotic materials that modern tech relies on. It's modern imperialism.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Weapon?

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Yes. Long term approach to gaining political influence. Used as a weapon, it fosters dependency. Use as a good will approach, it fosters appreciation and the beginning of a bond of trust.

    The infrastructure and loan programs China has been used for years in Africa and South America as the weapon.

    Just take a gander of the infrastructure failures and unpayable loans. Also, the rare earth mining in central Africa.

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    • [–] 20 points 4 months ago

    Thank you China.

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    [–] 53 points 4 months ago

    They beat the US in healthcare; if they beat them in power infrastructure too it would be hilarious

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    [–] 49 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Well done China! 👍
    It's an absolute disgrace the lack of help there is to Cuba from the rest of the world, with a humanitarian crisis caused by the US blockade, for absolutely no reason!! What USA is doing is a crime against humanity, And the whole world is just silent about it?! 🤮

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    • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    Cuban Solar Crisis

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    [–] 6 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    It really sucks that the Canadian government isn't also helping Cuba. I am very disappointed in our governments extremely inadequate response to the US's illegal shakedown of Cuba.

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    • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Whenever I see these installations, I can't help but think I'd rather see panels all over the place and much more decentralized.

    Kind of anywhere, but especially some place with the occasional flattening storm and to help reduce load and transmission costs when demand is high.

    I don't know though maybe it's better to clump kinda dangerous things.

    Either way, it's literally a place to go soak up some sun, may as well make hay while the sun is shining.

    I'd love to wander around a beachy place under some sort of solar installation to help with shade.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    It's because they'd be more expensive if decentralized; all of the extra equipment required to transform the output, step down voltage and such would need to be replaced with thousands (millions?) of smaller units that do the same thing at an individual home/building level, requiring a larger trained labour force to install/maintain/replace them.

    Personally, I think that would be rad, but most people don't care to learn enough to safely be power engineers and if you're in a 2 year backlog to get your home solar sorted out after a hurricane, you'd probably wonder why they didn't do it this way instead.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    You'd save all that transmission cost. No need for high voltage DC at all 12-48 v dc systems are pretty safe. They've been putting them on boats for years. Couple that with the EU regulations for USB C and you'd have basically all electrical needs met minus climate control.

    Fridges might have to be replaced, or just get a bunch of cheap inverters.

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    • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    China the 🐐

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    [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    It's not like I'm great at reading Spanish, but from what I gather this Prensa Latina article says that three projects of 4 MW each are being built, donated by "the asian giant", which I assume means China. Whereas 75 is (or rather, was, in 2024) the number of solar parks in total that exists:

    https://www.prensa-latina.cu/2024/02/19/cuba-avanza-con-colaboracion-china-en-uso-de-energia-renovable/

    Did a translation error sneak in somewhere?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (2 children)

    What I don't get is why that number apparently went down since. This daily report only mentions 54 solar parks:

    Los 54 parques solares fotovoltaicos generaron ayer 4240 MW/hora, con una potencia máxima de 792 MW.

    Funny side note, even the writer of this note is confused by W vs Wh. They must mean 4240 MWh, MW/h is meaningless.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    So looks like the article posted by OP, written in 2026, somehow takes his headline from a translation mistake from the Prensa Latina Article from 2024, and then cites a Granma Article from 2025 for most of its content.

    Why not use the 92 parks in the newest plan for the headline? Is this just automated bad blogspam or what is happening?

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    • [+] -6 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    This is part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. It's to put other countries in debt and make them owe China. It's disguised as investments.

    There's also a lot of problems with quality and human rights violations.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    And the US loans through the IMF are any different? Like Boohoo at least china is actively building infrastructure that's benefits these countries instead of just straight up extracting natural resources.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    They are different yes. Also its laughable to suggest its not extracting natural resources over half the shit they're building is purely for extraction and the other half is for transporting it back to china.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago*

    Yes, they are. For one thing it is possible to renegotiate the loan if it turns out they can't pay it. Loans are only given with oversight and implementation of economic and political reforms. the terms are clear before the money is given. Unfortunately, they are often very difficult changes and are effectively impacting sovereignty in that the reforms are toward a western economic model.

    The Chinese approach is different, and usually ends up being a debt trap. Also, they are extracting natural resources, and failing to take responsibility for their failures.

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    • [+] -23 points 4 months ago (35 children)

    Why not before? Optics..

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  • [–] 42 points 4 months ago

    Because before Cuba got tons of oil from Venezuela.

    The US ended that with no plan on how Cuba would cope, just left them to fucking die. It's gross.

    Cuba had it's entire infrastructure built around oil burning to produce power.

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  • [–] 28 points 4 months ago (19 children)

    Yes, optics, because if the US sinks ships carrying solar panels they lose even more respect on the international stage and bring even more attention to their illegal military blockade of Cuba in which they have directly killed over 200 civilians via bombing vessels in and around Cuba, and indirectly killed at least a few thousand by eliminating oil imports to the country.

    China had nothing but risk before the carrier group was moved into place, as the US' official stance was international sanctions and complete lockout from using USD internationally if you dared to trade with Cuba.

    After the blockade those sanctions are meaningless as no other country would follow the US if they actually issue said sanctions, and the US itself isn't economically capable of handling sanctions against China at this point in time. So China has no risk to help out.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago (14 children)

    So China has no risk to help out

    If China saw it that way, they would be sending oil. They're still trying not to rock the boat, the way I had it explained by a chinese cab driver is that if they continue to follow the rules and be reliable, more of the world will be willing to expand relations with China, protecting them from the US or anybody else acting unfairly. I did not call him naive to his face.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    Why do you think aiding an addiction would be helping out? Solar panels are blockade proof. Cuba's biggest problems come from over reliance on disposable imports; if Cuba had access to solar Venezuela wouldn't have been invaded and Cuba wouldn't have any real negative effects from this blockade besides the loss of tourism income.

    Besides China doesn't sell oil, they do sell Solar panels and batteries. One generally gives what they have.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Keeping the power plants running so babies don't die is not feeding an addiction wtf.

    China has tankers with oil, this is an emergency, building solar is great long term, but it doesn't matter to the patients on ventilators and the farmers who's tractors have no fuel.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Keeping the power plants running so babies don’t die is not feeding an addiction wtf.

    What... what do you think the solar panels are going to do?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    They will decrease the severity of the crisis, but as the article says, theres not enough, they take time to come online, and upgrading Cuba's grid and storage will take even longer, and it still doesn't help processes that need oil like farming and concrete production.

    Cuba needs oil now.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    doesn't help processes that need oil like farming and concrete production.

    If they can reduce oil use in power generation, it should help by reducing the overall amounts of oil they need to procure

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Cuba has a huge capacity to make ethanol. Brazil does this.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Brazil is around 8,514,877 km², Cuba is around 110,860 km².

    Brazil has around 963,000 km² farm land. Cuba has around 36,000 km²[1] of farmland.

    If it were to convert all of its farmland into ethanol production, resulting in the mass starvation of the Cuban population, it could not produce anything close to what Brazil could produce. But how much could it produce?

    We'll be assuming Brazil's sugarcane method is the most efficient crop for Cuba given their similar climates and growing zones. Which gives us around 764,000 liters of ethanol per km²

    Cuba uses 178,000 barrels per day of oil, which comes out to 28,302,000 liters of oil per day, or around 10,337,305,500 liters per year. Which means Cuba only needs to convert... 13,560 km² of their farmland to ethanol production. So the famously fat and never food insecure Cubans need to just give up half[1] of their food production!

    Great solution.

    [1]Cuba has 109,000 km² of land, and many sources give the available farmland of cuba at 30% of available land... but also list it at 65.000 km². Which wouldn't be 30%. I'm assuming 30% is about right given the geography of Cuba. It's possible 63% of Cuba is farmland, which makes this slightly easier, but looking at google maps that doesn't seem right.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    if they continue to follow the rules and be reliable, more of the world will be willing to expand relations with China, protecting them from the US or anybody else acting unfairly

    I feel that this is true to an extent. If you are a government in Africa or a company in Singapore, will you prefer to do business with the guys who have a track record of keeping their word, or the guy who changes his mind every second day?

    Besides, if China openly flouts the blockade, how sure are you that Trump won't start WW3? Better to just deny any new weapons and wait for the old ones to rust.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    If China saw it that way, they would be sending oil.

    Short term solution from a country without oil.

    I did not call him naive to his face.

    How dare China behave like the USA.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    The naive part was expecting China to be treated fairly by America or its vassals, any progress will be undone via propaganda. Look at this very thread, how many comments are seeing China fighting climate change, protecting Cuba's sovereignty, and stopping a literal famine, and trying to explain why actually "China bad".

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  • [+] -12 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Nice alt account

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

    Girl my account is older than yours

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  • [–] 40 points 4 months ago* (5 children)

    Because before Cuban doctors didn't have to rush to manually pump the respirators for intubated infants multiple times a week during blackouts due to the US blockade intensifying.

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  • [+] -26 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Your user tag is “Wumao” so I’m gonna trust my gut.

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  • [–] 26 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I'm literally American lol. But I was in China a couple months ago, so I understand why you wouldn't want to listen to anyone with direct knowledge of the subject, we wouldn't want to challenge pre-existing beliefs with evidence and observation.

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  • [–] -3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    If Russia can pay Americans to spout propaganda benefitting Russia, why can't China do the same? I'm not saying you are, but "I'm literally American" isn't a useful response by any means.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    Except you could also be someone's influence campaign. If you automatically give the assumption of "paid propagandist" more weight than the assumption of earnest belief, you may as well exit the Internet.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Literally every good thing countries do that they don't have to is either completely or partially optics.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago

    Yes, which we call soft power. It's generally very beneficial, which is exactly why US gutted USAID because they literally can't do anything right.

    Few million in infrastructure aid pays out huge with soft power.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Maybe, but helping a people with similar politics who are suffering miserably is always a good thing for those people. The fact that they are so close to a mutual enemy is icing on the cake.

    This is the culture that gave us "the Art of War", after all. I'd expect no less of them, and normally I'd expect at least as much from us. Unfortunately we're lead by the (possibly) worst representative of humanity possible right now.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    They dont have similar politics, lmfao.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    No, they are not both communist nations with a similar dislike of America and authoritarian governments. One loves America and hates Communism. /s

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    • [–] -4 points 4 months ago

    Great! They'll be able to keep their empty fridges cool!

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