Renewable energies, a priority for Cuba

The Cuba-EU Expertise Exchange Programme II, funded by the European Union and managed by FIIAPP, recently organised a variety of activities designed to strengthen the role of renewable energies in the Cuban electricity supply system.

Cuba is currently developing a policy to promote renewable energy sources and their efficient use. The country therefore hopes that by 2030 24% of its electricity will be generated using renewable sources and that, out of this 24%, 6% will come from wind farms, for which it is necessary to install more than 300 wind turbines.

A workshop on wind farm maintenance was held with this goal in mind. The activity was organised by the project in conjunction with the Cuban Centre for Renewable Energy Technology Studies (CETER) and the German company Energy Competence Centre Berlín, and with support from the University of Holguín. Experiences were exchanged during the workshop on the management and maintenance of wind farms and a visit was made to the wind farms operating in the eastern region of this Caribbean country.

Cuba has also identified a need for renewable energy research centres to support the technological transfer process and cooperate on identifying opportunities for making better use of existing technologies and resources.

To strengthen this cooperation, the project organised a workshop on managing technological innovation for renewable energy sources. During the activity, Cuban specialists from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment and universities and centres associated with research, development and innovation in renewable energy sources exchanged good practices with the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Among the most important topics dealt with in the workshop were reflecting on concepts such as innovation, technological maturity, social energy demand, the gender perspective in the management of innovation and the position of the SDGs as a conceptual framework.