Cuba now exporting green technology experts

[eridani]

http://www.alternet.org/environment/140162/why_obama_should_take_notes_from_cuba_on_a_green_energy_revolution/


Finally, Cuba tackled the transmission losses by upgrading transmission cables, electrical posts and meters. By installing close to 2,000 diesel- and fuel-based micro-power plants, the country also eliminated the need for transmission to many communities altogether.
The Revolución Energética made power blackouts, which in 2004 and 2005 hit the country almost every day, a thing of the past. According to the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), Cubans consumed an average 1,380 kWh of electricity per capita in 2007/08 -- more than ten times less than US consumers. Guevara-Stone points out that Cuba is the world’s only country which has achieved high human development (according to the HDI) without an unsustainable ecological footprint (as measured by the Living Planet index).

Just as Cuba is exporting doctors and teachers, the country also sends renewable energy experts abroad. Cuban technicians and scientists have installed solar panels and provided advice on energy efficiency in countries such as Bolivia, Honduras, Lesotho, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa and Venezuela. The country’s social workers have installed more than 2 million energy efficient light bulbs in homes in Haiti.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Great report. Industrious, resourceful, amazing, creative response

to the longest lasting hardship imposed by the longest lasting embargo in world history.

I remember reading in 2000 about the work they were doing installing solar panels on school buildings up in the Sierra Maestra mountains far from normal electrical lines.

They have been spectacular in their ingenious ways of working around problems which would flatten most of us!