Why Cuba is late on renewable energy

Ten years after approval Policy for the prospective development of renewable sources and efficient use of energy in Cuba remains little more than a wish list. The history of the Herradura wind farms, in the north of Las Tunas, confirms this.

The first of the complexes construction began in early 2019 as part of a project involving 34 mills, each 70 meters high, with a combined capacity of up to 51 megawatts per hour (MWh). For comparison, Gibara Wind FarmsThe first one, located 40 kilometres to the east in Cuba, in Holguín, began operating in the 2000s. Its designed power was 9.6 MWh, and it was supplied by 12 generators, each 50 metres high.

The Las Tunas wind energy development plan envisaged a three-stage process for La Herradura and an additional wind farm in the municipality of Manatí (50 kilometers to the west of it). Herradura 1 would be followed shortly by Herradura 2 (with 50 MWh of installed capacity) and, in the longer term, Herradura 3 (30 MWh). They would have national financing, while the project in Manatí (122 MWh) depended on foreign investment, the exact origin of which was not specified. Only the capacity of the first two farms in La Herradura would be enough to almost completely cover the energy demand in the province of Las Tunasso they said at that time.

The plant turned out to be too ambitious, considering the economic conditions in Cuba. Even in countries with long experience in generating wind energy, such an installation requires significant investment. In Spain, for example, it is estimated that wind farm assembly On land, it takes four to eight years, but if it involves marine areas, the process can take more than a decade.

Shortly after work on Herradura 1 began, Cuba found itself in the midst of an oil crisis in September 2019 that even though cargo transportation was one of the priority supply sectors, it was ultimately affectedThis sector was essential in the first phase of the project, when the giant bases for the wind generators had to be cast.

Then the pandemic and the resulting crisis caused further delays in the schedule, to the point where the president Miguel Díaz-Canel discovered this during a visit to the complex in April 2024: The Ministry of Energy and Mining has decided that, at least for now, Herradura 1 will be limited to the launch of 22 mills with a total capacity of 33 MWh. The gradual integration of this equipment will take place during the rest of 2024, and in 2025, the president assured, as reported by the newspaper Employees.

During a government inspection, those responsible for the work stated that Herradura 2 was “under construction” but did not provide a completion date; nor did they say anything about the completion of Herradura 1 or the likely future of Herradura 3.

For this type of project, the Herradura wind farms experienced a unique event. Before the pandemic disrupted logistics chains worldwide, delivery delays were common wind powered generators and other wind farm equipment by suppliers. This circumstance affects all areas of the wind energy industry, but in particular concerns the requirements for obtaining bank loans that finance new farms.

Most of the payment terms accepted by loan applicants are dependent on the delivery of wind generators, so their installation and start-up of production becomes a priority.

In Herradura 1, according to state media, most of the technological installations has been in Cuba for yearsHowever, the lack of funds to complete the construction works (roads, bases, electrical networks and substations…) delayed the completion of the farm.

Even though five years ago the Cuban economy was in a better situation than today (In 2019, the island was visited by 4.5 million foreign tourists.almost twice as much as in 2023, and remittances have doubled their current amounts), at the time the decline in the main sources of foreign exchange was already visiblewhich cast doubt on the country’s ability to implement large projects using only its own capital.

Foreign investment and advice were needed to ensure success. The 2014 edition of the Foreign Investment Opportunities Portfolio—the first since the announcement of the Herradura projects—included maps listing planned renewable complexes in the country, including Herradura 1 and 2, but did not include specific capital management proposals for the Las Tunas complex. In fact, the aforementioned Portfolio shows that the interest of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Investment was aimed at attracting foreign financiers to two other wind farms at Banes and Maisí; the Herradura complexes were financed by the Cuban state.

Not even in the latest edition of this portfolio whether projects — Herradura 3, still not started — are going to tender. Although the energy sector is the second largest in terms of applications at the national level (129), in Las Tunas there is only one call for potential investors: Photovoltaic park with a capacity of 17 MWh worth $60 million.

This seems to be a prime example of what the Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Rodrigo Malmierca, said in December 2021. Described as an “unintended and ineffective promotion” with regard to the balance of implementation of the Foreign Investment Law in the country.

At least initially, Herradura 1 was financed by a Chinese state loan that included the transfer of technology produced in that country. The first announcements about the farm appeared in 2013, with the intention of it being operational by early 2018, recalled analysts Jorge Piñón and Ricardo Torres in December 2022 in article for the Cuba Capacity Building project, with the University of Columbia. The work became an example of what experts called “missed opportunities” for the island in its attempt to modernize its energy matrix.

The Failure of “Green Oil”

The bioenergy plant was built at the Ciro Redondo sugar mill in Ciego de Ávila, which Piñón and Torres said was another major renewable energy initiative undertaken in Cuba in the past decade.

It is a Chinese technological power plant with a capacity of up to 62 MWh, which is produced by burning bagasse and marabú. Its construction and management were entrusted to the company Biopower SA, with British-Cuban capital, which had to share its experience with Azcuba and the Electricity Conglomerate, to repeat the project in 24 other power plants, each with a capacity of 20 to 60 MWh.

This Renewable Energy Development Policy it was predicted since 2014, the year of its publication, that at that time the total generating capacity of the bioenergy plant would exceed 570 MWh. And at the end of the graph of managing its investments – at the end of 2026 – its contribution would reach 870 MWh. This number corresponds to 25% of the maximum electricity demand in the country at presentwhich, according to the daily reports of the Electric Conglomerate, ranges from 3,200 to 3,500 MWh.

This was not a strange idea. In 1970, the sugar industry produced 18% of the energy produced in Cuba in that year, when 4,888.5 gWh was produced. Of this, 880.5 gWh was produced by the sugar industry. The unique thing is that the electricity from the sugar mills is concentrated in the four or five months of harvest, a period in which the share of the sugar mills in energy production is much greater, proportionally speaking. As recently as 2000, the production of sugar mills accounted for 6% of the country’s total production (about 150 MWh, considering the current SEN capacity). In essence, sugar mills are small thermoelectric power plants that use bagasse instead of oil to generate the electricity that moves the tandems and other equipment involved in sugar production.

Even the oldest mills are able to meet their energy needs from biomass and contribute to the national electricity system (NES)study conducted by the Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment in the mid-1990s, which is available on the platform of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “The energy consumption of the factory’s driving equipment is about 15-25 kWh/ton of reed,” the authors of the text noted; meanwhile, burning the same volume of organic matter can produce between 27 and 47 kilowatts, depending on the type of cogeneration technology installed.

As with Herradura 1, in the case of the Ciro Redondo bioenergy plant, the state’s investment policy “failed at what was easy,” as they say in baseball; in other words, it stopped investing in the sugar cane fields that were supposed to provide bagasse, or in marabú crops, and instead opted for the difficult (by Cuban standards) undertaking of building a power plant.

IN March 2022exactly two years after synchronization with SEN, the bioenergy plant was operating at half capacity, mainly due to insufficient availability of sugar cane and marabú, Kubadebate reported. The first problem was more difficult to solve, given the lack of fuel and fertilizer to renew the plantations, but the shortage of the second was — to put it mildly — surprising.

The lack of marabú for the plant’s furnaces was caused by the breakdown of the combines, Grandmother the newspaper’s correspondent said after visiting the fields“Of the 11 parks, only four remain active, although there were days when only one was operational. This was because the investment money was not enough to buy parts, new combines or to start a machine shop that never existed,” he noted.

Two years later, in February last year, the situation has not changed muchDíaz-Canel learned during a tour of Ciro Redondo’s plant. “This is where we buried the country’s money,” he lamented.

Over the past few years, both the bioelectric and sugar cane factories have been investing, but their energy and sugar inputs have not reached the expected levels, prompting the state to take action abandon your traditional optimism for pessimistic caution. The Azcuba Group, the owner of the plants and the entity on which the investment depended, at the beginning of June, the upcoming construction of a sugar factory was announcedwhich will be the first in Cuba in over 40 years, at the mercy of foreign capital and with a 100 MWh bioelectric power plant connected. This would almost double the losses of the Ciego de Avila sugar factory.

As with previous investments and the ambitious photovoltaic energy plan presented by the Minister of Energy and Mining, Vicente de la O Levy announced The March announcements are heavy on details about the benefits these projects will bring, but they almost completely ignore the issue of who will pay for them and how.

Despite so many changes, the share of renewable energy sources remains roughly at the same level as it was ten years ago when it all started, less than 5% of national energy productionaccording to ONEI, despite how much was invested.

Amado Viera