Re: [Marxism] Cuba's Energy Revolution,

[nada <dwaltersMIA@xxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, poorly written sentence on my part, Eli.

There is a tendency on the left to glorify Cuba's response to a 
situation that it found itself in and not to address the problem itself, 
which is energy starvation. To the point that this becomes the 'answer' 
for other countries. I've seen this sort of thing on blogs and other 
arenas for left discussion. I praise Cuba as well for it's response. But 
the 'response' itself is not the answer, or final answer, to it's energy 
crisis. It's a lot more complex than that.

I knew that much of Cuba's oil fired generation was switching over to 
diesel, hadn't realized it was in the form of diesel generators. Again, 
Cuba is doing what it has to do in order to survive. Eli writes this, 
however, as if the 1854 diesel and fuel oil micro-electrical plants is 
somehow a 'good thing'. I think not, at least not necessarily. The 
pollution caused by diesel generators will now be spread about island 
instead of emanating from from the larger 2 dozen or so older oil fired 
boilers that traditionally powered Cuba's grid. And...in fact...still 
do.  The efficiency, *mechanically*, of the small diesel generators is 
not as good as larger, modern units burning the same fuel. So the Cubans 
in once sense are going to take a hit on overall efficiency as measured 
against the amount of fuel used to produce a given amount of 
electricity. Also, the issue of growth and the natural increase of per 
capita energy use as standards of living rise is not going away. 
But...these smaller generators can be scaled up in use and installation 
a LOT easier than bigger units so this gives the Cubans flexibility.

The Cubans decided, correctly as I see it, that it's cheaper to build 
the diesel-electric generators than to string up more transmission lines 
from these old central power stations. Diesel is more expensive than oil 
(essentially oil in the older units are simply unrefined, but filtered, 
crude oil) but burns cleaner and more efficiently than the fuel oil. 
Diesel of course has it's own issues, including a different kind of 
deadly particulate and, of course, because it's a distillate, costs 
more. They import most of it but the PDVSA of Venezuela is going to 
upgrade some of Cuba's oil refineries to produce it and, will build a 
brand new oil refinery that can actually produce both diesel and 
gasoline from Venezuela's tar-sand/heavy crude.

There are large rural areas where the national electric grid doesn't 
reach. Grids are very, very expensive. So, Cuba has a rural 
electrification program and the "micro-generators" fits in well. 
Eventually, in the future, it can all be tied together in a hybrid form 
of both small and large grids, integrated with large and small 
generators, giving Cuba a grid not unlike that of Israel, which has a 
powerful, yet decentralized, energy grid based on small-generator usage.

Cuba DOES have a lot of domestic oil now and it will start using it's 
off shore oil for part of it's domestic consumption. I expect over the 
next 5 to 10 years importing oil from Venezuela will no longer be 
necessary. If their refineries are tuned for Venezuelan heavy crude, and 
Cuba's offshore oil is light-sweet crude (which it is) then I can see 
Cuba's national oil company working with PDVSA to export Cuba's own oil 
while continuing use Venezuela's.

In 2001 Cuba issued a "final" notice on it's attempt to build the 
Juragua Nuclear Power Plant in Cienfuegos that it would be canceled. To 
my knowledge there has been no attempt to again revive the project. The 
US objected from the get-go to the construction of the plant for safety 
reasons (and some of them seemed to be legitimate concerns). The plant 
was not the Chernobyl type reactor but still had many issues. Bulgaria 
was forced to close two of the same type of these Russian reactors as a 
criteria for joining the European Union.

There is some 'chatter' about approaching South African and/or China for 
use of their pebble bed modular reactors but nothing serious.

David

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu