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CLIMATE
CHANGE-CUBA: "Energy is an Instrument of
Power"
By Daniela Estrada - IPS/Terraviva*
COPENHAGEN, Dec 13 (IPS) - "Energy is an
instrument of power. Whoever has energy,
controls the world," Cuban expert Luis
Bérriz said in an address to Klimaforum, the
civil society meeting being held in parallel
to the UN conference on climate change in
the Danish capital.
Cuba ditched the pursuit of nuclear energy,
not at the behest of countries like the
United States, but because it discovered
that the sun "is the energy of socialism,"
Bérriz said Sunday. He was referring to an
abandoned project, dating from the 1980s,
for a nuclear plant in Juraguá, in the
province of Cienfuegos.
Bérriz, the head of the Cuban Society for
the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources
and Respect for the Environment (CUBASOLAR),
arrived in the Danish capital Dec. 8 to give
several talks at Klimaforum and participate
as an observer at the climate change summit.
"Hard energy, concentrated in coal, oil and
nuclear power is imperialistic and
capitalist," said Bérriz in a talk on Cuba's
state energy policy.
In contrast, "the sun shines for everyone,
even the rich. It belongs to no one,
therefore solar energy is the energy of
socialism, the peoples' energy, the energy
of the future," added the Cuban scientist
and expert on non-conventional renewable
energy sources (NCRE).
To avoid a new form of "control" through the
use of NCRE, countries must "develop their
own know-how" and avoid importing equipment
as well as technological capability from
rich countries, said Bérriz, who was invited
to Copenhagen by the Danish-Cuban Friendship
Association.
Cuba has just completed the construction of
a factory for manufacturing solar heaters,
and is expanding another plant that produces
solar panels.
At Klimaforum, held at a sports centre near
Copenhagen's central train station, NGOs
from all over the world have warned that
conversion to a low-carbon economy with
reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as
discussed by the states at the Dec. 7-18
15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to
the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, may become just another form
of the prevailing economic system, or
capitalism in a "green" garb.
"If we focused on developing NCRE, a
conference like this (COP 15) would be
totally unnecessary. We would not need to be
concerned about global warming," Bérriz
said.
At present 96 percent of Cubans have full
access to electricity in their homes, he
said. The remainder have electricity for
some hours a day, and some families have not
yet been connected to any power grid.
But the Cuban government, according to
Bérriz, will not rest until all of Cuba's
11.2 million people have access to
electricity, as they already do to health
and education services.
The "energy revolution" in Cuba, which got
under way in 2006 after a severe crisis
which caused frequent, lengthy blackouts, is
based on four pillars, said Bérriz.
The first is energy saving and efficiency,
which has led to changing light bulbs and
other inefficient domestic appliances for
efficient ones, at low cost and with payment
facilities for families, he said.
The second is "distributed electricity
generation," meaning multiple generation
facilities throughout Cuban territory.
"A hard, concentrated energy policy would
build very large power plants and distribute
electricity from them to a wide area. It's a
problem of control. We are going to produce
electricity in a lot of small plants that
are close to consumers," Bérriz told
TerraViva.
He said this policy has a number of
benefits. For instance, if a hurricane
destroys a huge coal-fired thermoelectric
plant, the chances are that most of the
population will suffer a blackout. In
contrast, if four or five small
hydroelectric stations are damaged instead,
power failures would be small and localised.
"Another advantage is in a war situation.
Formerly, the United States (Cuba's
long-time adversary) could have sent over
six or seven bombs and taken out the whole
national electrical system. That's no longer
the case: we have thousands (of plants). It
would have to send thousands of bombs," the
scientist said.
As in other Latin American countries, the
remaining pillars of the Cuban energy
revolution are the use of NCRE and promotion
of an environmentally sustainable energy
culture.
According to Bérriz, Cuba could make a
contribution to the world, and especially
the countries of the region, in terms of
transfer of scientific knowledge. The
difficulty, he says, are the country's
limited resources, compounded by the nearly
half-century U.S. embargo, the global
economic crisis and seasonal hurricane
damage.
Cuban experts have been invited by the
Chilean government to teach people how to
make biogas digesters, and to Peru to make
solar driers for industrial timber
factories. In Ecuador, they have helped
build small hydroelectric stations, and they
have also helped electrify areas in Bolivia
and Venezuela, he said.
*This story appears in the IPS TerraViva
online daily published for the U.N.
Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen.
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