China is helping Cuba race to capture renewable solar energy as the United States imposes an effective oil blockade on the Caribbean island, creating its worst energy crisis in decades.
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.
Beijing has ramped up energy assistance to Havana in recent years amid a deepening security relationship, which allegedly includes spy stations in Cuba that can gather intelligence on the United States and neighbors.
This support is now drawing greater interest as President Donald Trump ratchets up pressure on the Cuban government to enter into negotiations by cutting off oil supplies and threatening to seize the country.
“I do believe I’ll [have] the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said on Monday. Asked whether this meant diplomacy or military action, he said: “Taking Cuba in some form … whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it if you want to know the truth. They’re a very weakened nation right now.” “Taking Cuba in some form, whether I free it, take it, I can do anything I want,”
Following the U.S. military’s capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump’s threats hardly seem like empty rhetoric.
The United Nations has warned that Cuba, a nation of 11 million is already on the verge of humanitarian “collapse.” and the country has faced a major energy crisis with intermittent blackouts disrupting critical operations. On Monday, Cuba’s energy ministry afternoon reported a “total disconnection” of the national electric system.
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in February that energy cooperation with Cuba has achieved “fruitful results” and will continue. “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 said in a statement to The Washington Post.
China’s foreign minister spoke to his Cuban counterpart last week, days after Trump said the island was in “deep trouble.”
China’s decades-long push into clean energy technology is now helping to protect itfrom the soaring oil and gas crisis spurred by Trump’s war against Iran. But even before oil and gas prices skyrocketed this month, China was flexing its dominance and in few places has this been more evident than Cuba.
Chinese exports of solar equipment to Cuba skyrocketed from about $5 million in 2023 to $117 million in 2025 and show no sign of stopping, according to the British energy think tank Ember. Beijing pledged last year to help Cuba build more than 92 solar parks by 2028, and more than half of these projects have come online, authorities say. Satellite imagery from 2025 shows clusters of solar panels springing up over a matter of weeks.
This month, the Cuban government announced that the island had generated more than 900 megawatts of photovoltaic energy in one midday segment for the first time.
Because Cuba’s energy demands are comparatively low, even a small amount of additional input has made a marked contribution. Solar could now be responsible for as much as 10 percent of Cuba’s electricity generation, according to Ember analyst Dave Jones, up from almost nothing a year ago. That would be among the fastest expansions of solar energy anywhere, Jones said, and place Cuba ahead of most countries — including the U.S. — in the share of electricity generated by sun power.
“Cuba,” he said, “is perhaps in the middle of one of the most rapid solar revolutions.”
Chinese authorities have made clear that they intend to replicate what they’re doing in Cuba elsewhere. The recent volatility in fossil fuel supplies will aid their cause, say analysts.
“Fossil fuel dependency is ripping away national security and sovereignty and replacing it with subservience and rising costs,” Simon Stiell, the United Nations climate chief told European leaders in Brussels on Monday. “Sunlight doesn’t depend on vulnerable shipping straits.”
‘Making it happen’
One reason Cuba has ramped up so swiftly is that Chinese companies aren’t just producing and exporting solar equipment — they have also been facilitating installation, with Chinese companies working directly in Cuba to build solar farms. That’s different from other countries that have adopted Chinese clean energy technology en masse, such as Pakistan, where customers have largely been individual households and businesses that buy and install panels on their own rooftops.
“China is not going and installing loads of small sites of solar across the world,” Jones said, “so what we’re seeing is quite unique to Cuba.” Elsewhere, he said, government permissions and contracts for such projects can take months or years. In Cuba, Chinese companies are “just making it happen.”
Still, solar power isn’t close to fulfilling Cuba’s energy needs. Fossil fuels provided up to 95 percent of Cuba’s energy mix as recently as early 2024, according to official figures.
Trump has said he is willing to go to extreme lengths to drive the Cuban communist government led by President Miguel Díaz-Canel to make a deal that would include various concessions to the U.S. China’s support is “not going to make enough of a difference” against that pressure campaign, said Evan Ellis, a research professor of Latin American studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.
In a speech broadcast publicly last week, Díaz-Canel acknowledged that the dramatic increases in solar capacity has not been enough to solve the energy crisis. “Even with everything we’re putting together, we still need oil,” he said.
While Chinese officials have repeatedly condemned the Trump administration’s actions against Cuba, they are also wary of overstepping “in the backyard of the U.S.,” said Yanran Xu, an associate professor of international relations at the Renmin University of China in Beijing.
Publicly, China has framed its support of Cuba’s renewable energy sector primarily in economic and humanitarian terms. “But sometimes,” Xu said, “the economic argument goes with strategic goals. They overlap.”
Pan Deng, a prominent Chinese scholar on Latin America, said last month that China’s economic strengths, including in “new energy technologies,” make it an essential partner for the region. “Even if some Latin American countries show political deference to the United States,” he wrote in the state-owned Global Times, “their deep economic integration with China means they cannot sever pragmatic cooperation with Beijing.”
‘Below the radar screen’
In 2023, U.S. officials said China had established an eavesdropping station in Cuba that allowed it to harvest electronic communications in the American Southeast. In 2024, at least four China-linked sites in Cuba appeared capable of collecting intelligence on the U.S., the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies reported.
Beijing has an interest in “the survival of a friendly regime close to the U.S.,” Ellis said, but it probably does not want to be seen as intervening so directly that it elicits backlash from Washington. Shipping solar panels is one option that so far has flown “below the radar screen,” he said.
Given Cuba’s tropical climate and existing energy infrastructure, researchers say, there’s still significant room for solar to grow. The Cuban government this month lifted tariffs on solar imports and introduced new incentives for individuals to adopt solar energy.
“There’s an easy route for Cuba to continue,” Jones said.
What Cuba needs next is battery systems, which are essential for storing photovoltaic energy for use overnight, when deficits are most acute. Large-scale battery storage is expensive and can be difficult to install. But China is racing to improve the technology, Jones said, and progress in recent months has been “incredible.” “According to Ember’s data, Chinese battery exports last year hit a record high.
Huiyee Chiew contributed to this report.
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