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China is building 75 solar parks in Cuba, and the island’s power crisis is becoming an infrastructure experiment (www.vozpopuli.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/energy@slrpnk.net
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[–] 14 points 3 months ago (14 children)

So China has no risk to help out

If China saw it that way, they would be sending oil. They're still trying not to rock the boat, the way I had it explained by a chinese cab driver is that if they continue to follow the rules and be reliable, more of the world will be willing to expand relations with China, protecting them from the US or anybody else acting unfairly. I did not call him naive to his face.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    Why do you think aiding an addiction would be helping out? Solar panels are blockade proof. Cuba's biggest problems come from over reliance on disposable imports; if Cuba had access to solar Venezuela wouldn't have been invaded and Cuba wouldn't have any real negative effects from this blockade besides the loss of tourism income.

    Besides China doesn't sell oil, they do sell Solar panels and batteries. One generally gives what they have.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Keeping the power plants running so babies don't die is not feeding an addiction wtf.

    China has tankers with oil, this is an emergency, building solar is great long term, but it doesn't matter to the patients on ventilators and the farmers who's tractors have no fuel.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Keeping the power plants running so babies don’t die is not feeding an addiction wtf.

    What... what do you think the solar panels are going to do?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    They will decrease the severity of the crisis, but as the article says, theres not enough, they take time to come online, and upgrading Cuba's grid and storage will take even longer, and it still doesn't help processes that need oil like farming and concrete production.

    Cuba needs oil now.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    doesn't help processes that need oil like farming and concrete production.

    If they can reduce oil use in power generation, it should help by reducing the overall amounts of oil they need to procure

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Cuba has a huge capacity to make ethanol. Brazil does this.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Brazil is around 8,514,877 km², Cuba is around 110,860 km².

    Brazil has around 963,000 km² farm land. Cuba has around 36,000 km²[1] of farmland.

    If it were to convert all of its farmland into ethanol production, resulting in the mass starvation of the Cuban population, it could not produce anything close to what Brazil could produce. But how much could it produce?

    We'll be assuming Brazil's sugarcane method is the most efficient crop for Cuba given their similar climates and growing zones. Which gives us around 764,000 liters of ethanol per km²

    Cuba uses 178,000 barrels per day of oil, which comes out to 28,302,000 liters of oil per day, or around 10,337,305,500 liters per year. Which means Cuba only needs to convert... 13,560 km² of their farmland to ethanol production. So the famously fat and never food insecure Cubans need to just give up half[1] of their food production!

    Great solution.

    [1]Cuba has 109,000 km² of land, and many sources give the available farmland of cuba at 30% of available land... but also list it at 65.000 km². Which wouldn't be 30%. I'm assuming 30% is about right given the geography of Cuba. It's possible 63% of Cuba is farmland, which makes this slightly easier, but looking at google maps that doesn't seem right.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    if they continue to follow the rules and be reliable, more of the world will be willing to expand relations with China, protecting them from the US or anybody else acting unfairly

    I feel that this is true to an extent. If you are a government in Africa or a company in Singapore, will you prefer to do business with the guys who have a track record of keeping their word, or the guy who changes his mind every second day?

    Besides, if China openly flouts the blockade, how sure are you that Trump won't start WW3? Better to just deny any new weapons and wait for the old ones to rust.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    If China saw it that way, they would be sending oil.

    Short term solution from a country without oil.

    I did not call him naive to his face.

    How dare China behave like the USA.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    The naive part was expecting China to be treated fairly by America or its vassals, any progress will be undone via propaganda. Look at this very thread, how many comments are seeing China fighting climate change, protecting Cuba's sovereignty, and stopping a literal famine, and trying to explain why actually "China bad".

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