Cuba's Fragile Power Grid Finds a Powerful New Partner

Cuba finally reconnected its power supply on Tuesday after an extended blackout swept the island as the United States tried to choke off the island’s energy supply. Blackouts lasted nearly 30 hours as Donald Trump engineered an oil blockade and publicly ruminated about whether he would have the “honor of taking Cuba.” But the move, rather than isolating Cuba, may have just deepened its ties with China.

Cuba, which is already beleaguered with an obsolete and fragile power system, saw its grid collapse under the weight of the weekslong oil blockade. The Caribbean island nation’s energy system uses about 100,000 barrels of oil a day to power aging and ‘decrepit’ thermal power plants that the country received from the former Soviet Union. 

Cuban leadership has not publicly stated what caused the island’s power grid to go dark on Monday, but the issues are likely to persist as the United States’ aggression continues. Once energy was restored 29 hours later, President Miguel Diaz-Canel blasted Washington’s "almost daily public threats against Cuba." 

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The Trump administration has been vocal about its desire to oust the communist leader. However, experts warn that this would merely topple the figurehead of a country teetering on the edge of humanitarian collapse without actually doing anything to dismantle its political system. On Tuesday, Diaz-Canel wrote on social media that United States officials “intend to announce plans to take over the country, its resources, its properties, and even the very economy they seek to suffocate in order to force us to surrender.”

But while Cuba may be David to the United States’ Goliath, it has one very powerful ally. “As the Trump administration steps back from U.S. climate commitments and reinvests in fossil fuels, China is flexing its dominance in renewable energy, using offers of equipment, expertise and financing as geopolitical levers,” the Washington Post wrote in a Wednesday report.

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This alliance could prove critical to rebuilding a stronger, more resilient, and more independent energy grid powered by domestically generated renewable energies rather than fossil fuel imports. Cuba has struggled to reach its own goals of renewable energy expansion and integration over the past decade, with renewables contributing just 9 percent of the national energy mix at present, but increased support from China could change that. 

China has been exporting solar equipment for years now, but their trade relationship has massively ramped up in recent years and is predicted to continue its growth trajectory. According to British energy think tank Ember, China shipped $5 million worth of solar equipment to Cuba in 2023. In 2025 the figure was $117 million – a 2,240 percent increase. China has also pledged to help Cuba build nearly 100 solar parks by 2028, and many of these projects – more than half, according to authorities – have already come online. China is also backing the construction of the island’s largest wind farm, La Herradura 1.

But there may be limits to China’s generosity, and those limits may fall far short of what Cuba needs to wean itself off of its imperilled import dependencies once and for all. Ricardo Torres, an energy economist at the American University in Washington, explained, “The energy transition outlined by the government would require investments of around $8 billion to $10 billion over the next decade… Cuba simply does not have that kind of money, and China will not pay for everything.”

However, Cuba provides a strategic alliance for China, which reportedly has installed spy stations on the island that is just 90 miles away from the United States at its closest point. In February, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said that China’s energy cooperation with Cuba has achieved “fruitful results” and will continue going forward. “We oppose unwarranted interference by external forces and reject any actions that deprive the Cuban people of their right to subsistence and development,” spokesman Liu Pengyu told The Washington Post.