HAVANA, Dec 12 (IPS) – With Decree 110, revealed on 26 November, Cuba made it obligatory for main shoppers, whether or not they’re state or personal entities, to spend money on the usage of renewable power sources, whereas the power disaster going through the nation worsens.
In accordance with the decree, state and personal financial actors, representations of overseas establishments and associations should assure in new investments considered “main shoppers of power carriers” that half of the electrical energy they eat throughout daytime comes from renewable power sources.
If they can not set up photo voltaic panels, as a result of infrastructure of their premises, these entities should enter into contracts with the state-owned Unión Eléctrica – the guarantor of the technology, transmission and commercialisation of electrical energy – and hook up with photovoltaic parks.
Breaking these provisions can result in fines, interruption of electrical energy service for as much as 72 hours and different sanctions.
“The measure displays a failure within the coverage of incentives for funding in renewable power sources. It might favour the final inhabitants, but it surely does not change the truth that the change within the power matrix is being imposed with an iron fist,” Daniel López, a self-employed Havana resident, instructed IPS.
Entities thought of main shoppers – those who, within the final 12 months, have a median consumption of 30,000 kilowatts (KW) or 50,000 litres of gasoline – may have three years to make investments to cowl the 50% daytime use requirement.
Reactions on social media instantly adopted the information: many web customers celebrated the decree, some have been sceptical about its implementation, and a major quantity feared for the affect it may have on the personal sector.
“Is it viable offering a greater service or rising my manufacturing to need to pay extra (by investing in photo voltaic panels), and never simply in taxes? What number of companies are we going to lose due to this decree? Funding in Cuba is more and more tough,” commented consumer Horus in an article on the topic, revealed in Cubadebate, essentially the most extensively learn state-run information web site within the nation.
Certainly, the legislation may discourage entrepreneurship in mini-industries or productive areas that usually eat quite a lot of electrical energy, and even trigger companies to lift the costs of some services to recoup funding prices.
Since 2020, this Caribbean island nation with 10 million folks has been going through nice difficulties in assembly its home electrical energy demand with its manufacturing vegetation.
The instability of the electro-energy system has been so evident that, in lower than two months, Cuba has suffered three normal energy cuts – the newest on Wednesday 4 December – which have left lots of of 1000’s of individuals with out electrical energy for days.
Within the absence of incentives
The Patio El Triunfo challenge, situated within the capital’s Regla municipality, is an instance of a personal enterprise that’s self-sufficient in renewable power sources. It has put in photovoltaic panels with a technology of 10 kilowatts (KW), in addition to photo voltaic heaters and dryers, and a 0.5 KW wind turbine.
This “clear” power covers the daytime demand of the home and 4 companies which might be leased on the premises, together with an auto mechanic’s workshop and a lathe store.
Though the workshops have been in existence since 2010, in 2018 the challenge started the autonomous manufacturing of electrical energy, the excess of which it sells to Unión Eléctrica.
The chief of the challenge, Félix Morfis, who can be the Regla consultant of Cubasolar, a non-governmental organisation that has been selling the usage of renewable power sources in Cuba since 1994 to switch polluting ones, criticises the costs of photo voltaic panels and the bureaucratic obstacles to accessing credit score and shopping for them.
“Plainly the Cuban authorities has no curiosity in any way in folks placing up photo voltaic panels. They promote it, they hype it so much, however truly there’s nothing in hand,” he instructed IPS.
Within the retail markets of the state-owned firm Copextel, a primary one-kW technology module prices 2,551 MLC, the freely convertible forex, which is digital and whose reference worth is the greenback.
The common wage in Cuba is 4,648 pesos, about US$38.7, in keeping with the official change fee of 120 pesos to 1 greenback.
In 2021, the Ministry of Finance and Costs issued Decision 359,, which set the worth for power – from renewable sources – delivered to the Nationwide Electrical energy System (SEN) by impartial producers within the residential sector: 3 pesos per kilowatt hour (kWh), about 0.025 {dollars} on the official change fee.
In October 2023, the identical ministry authorized Decision 238, which doubled that quantity.
“They’re paying us 6 pesos (US$ 0.05) per kWh, however what I spend, they cost me by the traditional system. They promote it to me at a excessive worth and pay me cheaply. There isn’t any incentive,” Morfis added.
The “regular system” that Morfis mentions is a progressive tariff that applies to the residential sector, which after exceeding 450 KWh of amassed consumption, begins to value greater than six pesos per KWh, till it reaches 20 pesos per KWh (about US$ 0.17).
In any case, it’s a subsidised worth, in keeping with the authorities, in order that the price of paying for electrical energy by the nationwide electrical energy system is barely marginally decrease than importing or shopping for photo voltaic panels in overseas forex. Ultimately, it’s extra worthwhile to not spend money on renewable power sources.
Even so, increasingly persons are investing in photo voltaic panels with batteries, and personal companies that commercialise these units have multiplied resulting from recurrent energy outages and gasoline shortages.
With no new playing cards in hand, the federal government imposed funding in renewable power sources by Decree 110.
“Probably the most tough factor is tips on how to make it simpler for all the businesses to pay for these panels,” Néstor Pérez, a member of the Patio El Triunfo challenge, instructed IPS.
Overview of renewable power sources
Along with decentralised power technology and decreasing the burden on the state, the brand new decree goals to scale back on imported-fuel dependency.
Since 2019, when the federal government issued Decree-Regulation 345 on the “improvement of renewable sources and the environment friendly use of power”, this coverage has been a precedence.
Cuba goals for renewable power sources to account for twenty-four% of its power matrix by 2030.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel introduced on 27 November that greater than 2,000 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic power, equal to 2 million KW, is deliberate for the following three years.
Nonetheless, of the 19,825 gigawatt hours (GWh) produced in 2023, 46% got here from thermoelectric vegetation and 12.6% from utilizing thermal power from oil-fired pure gasoline, in keeping with knowledge from the Nationwide Statistics and Data Workplace (Onei).
Likewise, 13.8% was produced by gensets, electrical energy mills interconnected to the system that run on diesel and gasoline oil, and 22.7% from the six floating vegetation contracted to the Turkish firm Karpowership.
Solely 0.5% got here from hydroelectric vegetation and 1.2% from wind and photovoltaic energy.
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