Cuba is undergoing one of the fastest solar buildouts in the world.
And obviously, it is not because of the progressive climate policy of a brutal Cuban regime.
It is instead, because the island is running out of imported oil.
Not literally all oil: Cuba still produces heavy crude and natural gas.
But its economy needs roughly 100,000 barrels a day to function and produces only about 40% of that requirement domestically.
What about imports then?
Well, with Venezuela under Washington’s control, and the U.S. blockading the island, the foreign cushion that kept the rest of the system running has disappeared.
But at times like these, being a cog in larger geopolitical games can also be beneficial: China came to rescue.
Before we unpack how exactly Beijing helps Cuba, we will first look at how Cuba was running out of all other options.
How Cuba Ran Out of Oil
As mentioned above, Cuba has depended on imported energy for sixty years, cushioned first by the Soviet Union and then by Venezuela.
The Venezuelan relationship began after Hugo Chávez took office in 1999 and was formalized in 2000: subsidized oil flowed to Cuba in exchange for doctors and other services, sustaining the island for more than two decades.
But all good things come to an eventual end, and that cushion vanished after January 3, 2026, when US forces seized Nicolás Maduro in Caracas.
Our Venezuela cable covered the operation from the transition angle.
Its downstream effect was immediate: Washington moved against Venezuelan oil exports and the flow to Cuba, previously more than half the island’s supply, stopped.
Mexico was Cuba’s principal fallback supplier.
Then Trump threatened tariffs on countries providing oil to the island, and Mexico fell in line and suspended its shipments.
As a result, Cuba experienced the worst energy crisis in decades: fuel rationing, blackouts lasting much of the day, crippled transport and repeated nationwide grid failures.
Cuba imposed emergency conservation measures in February; another plant failure blacked out most of the country in March, and the national grid collapsed again in August.
The economic forecast meanwhile, has deteriorated with the energy supply.
The UN’s regional commission, ECLAC, projected a 6.5% contraction in April; by August it had revised the expected 2026 collapse to 10.3%.
The pressure campaign was designed to squeeze the regime by turning out the lights.
And it was working well.
How China Turned Some of The Lights Back On
Into that emergency stepped the world’s dominant solar manufacturer.
China controls more than 80% of every major stage of solar-panel manufacturing.
Its exports of solar equipment to Cuba rose from about $5 million in 2023 to $117 million in 2025, according to Chinese customs data reported by the Washington Post.
The support is not one single aid program.
It combines Chinese financing, Cuban purchases, technical assistance, commercial exports and outright donations.
Beijing financed equipment for 55 solar parks scheduled for 2025 and another 37 by 2028: 92 parks and roughly two gigawatts in total.
When completed, the system could supply close to two-thirds of Cuba’s current daytime demand (potentially enough electricity for more than 1.5 million homes).
China separately donated equipment for 120 megawatts of small parks and thousands of stand-alone systems intended for clinics, care homes, banks and isolated communities.
By early 2026, Cuba said it had installed more than one gigawatt of solar in about a year.
Authorities reported more than 900 megawatts of photovoltaic generation at midday in February, while Ember estimated solar’s share of total generation had risen from almost nothing to as much as 10%.
That is the spoiler for Washington’s regime change plans in action.
Washington engineered an imported-fuel crisis to break the regime.
But China stepped in and supplied the technology best suited to reducing the electricity sector’s fuel requirement.
Every kilowatt generated while the sun is up is one Cuba does not have to produce by burning scarce oil in a thermal plant or distributed generator.
The buildout therefore blunts the precise pressure the blockade was meant to apply. It does not neutralize it, but it changes the relationship between fewer imported barrels and fewer hours of electricity.
