Chinese solar energy for Cuba: how the island is sidestepping Trump’s oil embargo

Brussels – The path towards isolating Cuba chosen by US President Donald Trump is pushing the island further into the arms of China, with the European Union standing by and watching. This is the picture that emerges one month after the 29 January executive order with which the US president established a mechanism to impose additional tariffs on imports into the US from any country that sells oil to the Cuban regime.

There is no doubt that what The Economist defines as “a de facto embargo” contributed to worsening an economic and energy crisis that was already deep before the blow from Trump on Havana. The price of food has skyrocketed, along with transport costs, and petrol has been rationed via an app (there is, of course, a highly developed black market where the price per litre can reach up to 8 dollars compared to the official price of 1.10 dollars). At night, most streetlights remain off, and the increasingly frequent blackouts, which mainly affect the eastern and poorer areas of the island, have reached a record duration of 24 hours. Finally, there are repercussions for the tourism sector, which was once a main driver of the Cuban economy. Airlines can no longer refuel on the island, and tourist buses are increasingly grounded. Gaesa, the military conglomerate that dominates the tourism sector, has been forced to close many of its hotels. 

This is a decidedly complex situation, further compounded by the serious damage caused in the east of the island by Hurricane Melissa last October: approximately 3.5 million Cubans were affected, 90,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, and 100,000 hectares of arable land were lost. Yet, the US weapon of indirect embargo, potentially lethal, seems to have been blunted. China has come to Cuba’s “rescue” and, with it, the significant economic contribution that country is making to the Caribbean island to compensate for the severe oil shortage with alternative, more sustainable forms of energy, particularly solar energy.

This partnership began even before Trump’s latest act of hostility towards Havana: in December 2024, the two countries signed an agreement for the construction of seven solar parks, with an aggregate generating capacity of 35 megawatts, and a further project envisages the construction of another 92 parks by 2028, with a total capacity of 2 gigawatts. The letter of the agreements seems to be confirmed by figures from the think tank Ember: between April 2024 and April 2025, Cuban imports of Chinese solar panels grew 34-fold, faster than any other country in the world, and, by October 2025, Cuba had completed the construction of 35 solar parks with a maximum generation capacity of 750 megawatts. The Cuban regime’s commitment appears to be long-term: under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Havana aims to supply 26 per cent of its national electricity needs from renewable sources by 2035 (from 5 per cent in 2024). 

However, this transition will not be easy. The main problem is that of economic resources. “Cuba’s green transition will require investments of between $8 and $10 billion over the next decade, and the country simply does not have that kind of money, and China will not pay for everything,”  Ricardo Torres, an energy economist at American University in Washington, told The Guardian. Jorge Piñon, an expert at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas, agrees that the government in Havana is underestimating the investment required for such an ambitious long-term plan. “Solar energy production alone is not enough; you also have to think about how it is transmitted and stored,” he explained, and that is precisely the problem with solar panels: they can only provide energy directly during daylight hours, while peak demand is between 7 and 8 p.m., and the solution (battery storage capacity) remains the most expensive component of a solar energy system. Yet, China seems ready to come to the rescue in this case as well. According to The Economist, Cuba is also importing batteries from Beijing, “at a frenzied pace.”

And what about Europe? 10 years after the signing of the historic agreement to normalize relations between Brussels and Havana (12 December 2016), the EU seems to have missed the opportunity to present itself as a credible economic partner, specifically an energy partner, for the Caribbean island. The need not overly irritate the US ally has outweighed the possibility of actually implementing the Union’s commitments on sustainability and the energy transition (as well as the economic benefits of a potential partnership with Cuba in that regard). In the meantime, Beijing is smiling.