more heat
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/ar...ironmental-legacy-and-cubas-green-revolution/ (i feel this is written w something of a reflexive anticommunist bias but they still have to show their asses by giving cuba it's due credit):
"According to the United Nations’ 2016 Human Development Report, Cuba is one of just a handful of countries that has managed to improve the health and wellbeing of its citizens while developing sustainably. In the Environmental Performance Index compiled by Yale and Harvard universities, Cuba ranked 45 out of 180 countries – the highest ranking for a non-OECD, non-European state."
"...a five-minute address to the landmark United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio Do Janeiro...
“Tomorrow will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago.”
On his return, Castro set about amending the constitution to safeguard land, air and water resources,
becoming one of the first leaders in the world to do so."
"
These measures have worked... The amount of land under forestation in Cuba has grown considerably, from 19.2 per cent in 1990 to 30.1 per cent in 2015, according to the World Bank. An estimated 22 per cent of Cuba’s land is under legal protection, compared to 13 per cent in the US."
"There has been a similar record in marine environment. The island has almost 100 protected marine areas, with a quarter of its marine habitats protected from development.
Cuba now has the richest biodiversity of plants and animals of all the Caribbean, and is the fourth richest island in the world, from a natural history point of view. Over half of its plants and 95 per cent of its amphibians are not found anywhere else.
In a sign of the growing enthusiasm for the country’s environment, the American Museum of Natural History recently hosted a major exhibition celebrating Cuban biodiversity.
'Cuba’s nature has been protected by a combination of historical circumstance, but also because
Cubans themselves have been very committed to protecting their biodiversity,' says Ana Luz Porzecanski, director of the museum’s Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation."
"The 2005 hurricane season battered Cuba’s already inefficient electric grid. In 2006, the government instituted a series of reforms in the sector in what became known as the ‘Energy Revolution’.
These measures transformed the island’s lighting, eliminating the use of nearly 116 million old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs and
making Cuba the first nation to entirely phase them out.
Millions of inefficient consumer appliances such as fridges and fans were replaced with modern energy-saving versions using government aid."
"In 2014, Cuba set an ambitious target to produce 24 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
'Cuba expects to have 780MW [renewable energy] in the next 14 years, and I think it set the pace for 14 years because they want to be realistic,' Carlos Fernández-Aballí, chief strategy officer of Havana-based sustainable development consultancy Cuba Strategies, told a conference in New York.
'If they can do it in three, they’d also be happy, because these investments correspond to what the grid can physically incorporate without becoming unstable.'
To reach that target, Cuba needs an estimated $3.5bn of investment. The 24 per cent renewable energy target will, Cuba hopes, be achieved by 14 per cent from biomass, 6 per cent from wind, 3 per cent from solar and 1 per cent from hydropower.
The solar energy sector is moving the fastest towards the target. The government has built a manufacturing plant that has produced 14,000 photovoltaic solar panels outside the city of Cienfuegos and a 4.5MW solar plant near the US naval base at Guantanamo. Deals are also being struck with foreign engineering companies. Last May, British company Hive Energy signed a contract for a 50MW project with the Union Electrica de Cuba.
Cuba is also looking to harness wind power. There are currently four wind farms in operation, financed by Chinese and Spanish investors, with total capacity of 11.7MW, ranking Cuba 72nd worldwide in installed wind-power capacity. And the island’s largest wind farm to date, Herradura 1, is being built in the eastern province of La Tunas. The facility will have 34 of the 1.5MW-turbines made by China’s Goldwind, for a total of 51MW.
Yet the renewable energy technology that has most potential in Cuba is probably biofuels. Many commentators expect the sector to grow following the death of Fidel Castro, who once described them as a “sinister idea” because of concern they would compete with food crops.
In 2013, UK-based Havana Energy entered into a joint venture with the Cuban state-run Zerus SA to build five biomass power plants in Cuba. Called Biopower SA, it will generate power from bagasse at sugar mills. Valued at a total of $250m, the power plants are expected to produce 32MW each.
As well as using residues from sugar crops, Havana Energy is also involved in a project to use the marabu plant, an invasive shrub that has taken over much of Cuba’s arable land, as biomass. The burning of marabu would not only provide fuel, but would also give a boost to Cuban farming if the land it has overrun can be reclaimed.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/cuba-embarks-100-year-plan-protect-itself-climate-change
"Irma lent new urgency to a plan, called Tarea Vida, or Project Life, adopted last spring by Cuba’s Council of Ministers. A decade in the making, the program bans construction of new homes in threatened coastal areas, mandates relocating people from communities doomed by rising sea levels, calls for an overhaul of the country’s agricultural system to shift crop production away from saltwater-contaminated areas, and spells out the need to shore up coastal defenses, including by restoring degraded habitat. “The overarching idea,” says Salabarría Fernández, “is to increase the resilience of vulnerable communities.”"
"But Project Life stands out for taking a long view: It intends to prepare Cuba for climatological impacts over the next century. “It’s impressive,” says marine scientist David Guggenheim, president of Ocean Doctor, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., that has projects in Cuba. “
Cuba is an unusual country in that they actually respect their scientists, and their climate change policy is science driven.”"