After International Energy Agency executive director
Fatih Birol labeled
the ongoing global energy turmoil the “biggest energy
security threat in history” in April, events over the
summer vindicated his warning. The United States authorized
the grid operator Southwest Power Pool, Inc. to use
backup generation resources in 17 states it serves amid
growing demand and extreme heat in late July, while droughts
forced European nuclear plants to reduce
or halt operations in August. EU gas stocks reached
a record low during the last week of August, and
Bangladesh further tightened restrictions on business
operating hours as its gas shortage
worsened.
Weather extremes continue to disrupt energy
production and supply routes, alongside wars in the Middle
East and Ukraine. Additionally, rising
global electricity demand resulting from economic
development, growth of electric
vehicles, and the AI boom is adding pressure on systems
meant for a more energy-stable era. After decades of expanding
supply and security, the 2020s have brought a more
strained energy system amid a fragmented global political
order, affecting countries across the economic and resource
spectrum.
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The strain is also renewing interest in
rethinking how to overhaul the centralized, aging 20th-century
energy
systems. Many national electricity grids were built as
urbanization and industrialization made it economical to
generate electricity at massive power plants and transport
it over long distances, despite the fact that “up to
35.655 percent of the energy transmitted is lost throughout
this process,” a 2025
study in the Journal of Electrical Systems and
Information Technology found.
The development of
solar panels, batteries, smaller generators, and digital
control has allowed energy production and storage to be
partly decentralized. Some of these smaller technologies are
classified as distributed
energy resources (DERs), which can operate independently
or feed electricity into the main grid, and be combined into
microgrids to keep local areas powered when the wider grid
goes down.
Most advanced decentralized energy
development has occurred in wealthier
countries with stable governments. Major private
companies such as General
Motors and Tesla
can meanwhile use their own software to connect household
batteries and solar panels to the grid. But poorer countries
and territories facing conflict, disasters, and general
economic hardship are
now testing whether DERs and distributed energy can help
maintain
electrification as older systems buckle.
Ukraine
Under Attack
After more than four years of war,
Russia has destroyed
much of Ukraine’s larger power plants and transmission
systems. “Russia has systematically targeted energy
infrastructure with missile and drone strikes, destroying or
occupying roughly two-thirds of Ukraine’s prewar power
generating capacity,” states
Ukrainian international investment company System Capital
Management (SCM).
Amid constant rebuilding efforts,
Russia is increasingly targeting
smaller facilities as well. Having also severed its
connections to Russian energy, Ukraine’s prewar generation
capacity has fallen by almost half, from 56.1 gigawatts (GW)
to 27 GW, according
to a 2025 report by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
Ukraine’s integration
with the Continental European Grid has provided
some relief via imports. But Ukraine is also building
locally supported microgrids to reduce its dependency on
vulnerable transmission networks while ensuring they are
widely dispersed to make individual installations less
attractive targets. Solar microgrids are keeping
critical infrastructure such as hospitals
and water systems running when the main grid
fails.
Smaller gas turbines have
proven useful, but renewable energy has become essential
to maintaining energy supply. In 2025, Ukrainian company
DTEK Renewables partnered with British clean energy company
Octopus Energy Group to
install rooftop solar and battery storage at 100
business and public sector sites over three years, according
to SCM. Ukrainian cities have meanwhile established
“‘invincibility points,’ or earmarked emergency
shelters equipped with heat, communication, and basic
necessities,” states
Business Insider. The central Ukrainian city of
Vinnytsia currently has five
microgrids combining local generation such as solar,
gas, and hydropower with storage, while five wind farms are
to be added within the next two years.
Ukraine is also
ensuring that its larger energy projects are geographically
distributed. The pace of deployment in Europe’s
poorest country amid the war has been striking. In 2025,
DTEK and American company Fluence brought Ukraine’s
largest battery storage online, with a total capacity of 200
megawatts; it is spread across six sites. The approximately
$145 million project was built
in just six months, a quarter of the time it takes
comparable projects
in Europe. Ukraine’s urgency has made it “one of the
fastest-developing renewable markets in Eastern Europe,”
according to the German-Ukrainian
Energy Partnership.
The results are promising, if
uneven. On sunny days, Ukraine’s solar capacity can
produce large electricity surpluses, followed by severe
deficits when conditions change or Russia attacks. The
coming winter will test how far Ukraine’s emerging network
of smaller generators, storage systems, and microgrids can
reliably support the vulnerable centralized
network.
Puerto Rico and Self-Reliance
Since
2017, a series of natural disasters have repeatedly exposed
Puerto Rico’s vulnerable energy system. Hurricanes Irma
and Maria devastated the
grid in 2017, leading to a blackout for 11 months, the
longest in US history. This was followed
by earthquakes in 2019 and 2020 and Hurricane
Fiona in 2022. The repeated shocks have produced
blackouts, including a
two-day island-wide blackout in 2025. “Puerto Ricans
experience about 15 percent more service interruptions and
about 21 percent longer outages than their fellow Americans
on the mainland,” according
to Politico.
Puerto Rico, the poorest
US jurisdiction, has also faced an inconsistent response
from Washington. After Maria, federal efforts initially
focused on rebuilding the centralized grid and supporting
fossil fuel generation. The Biden administration later gave
more emphasis to renewable energy and distributed
systems, but bureaucratic delays slowed progress. The second
Trump administration reversed course again, canceling up to
$450 million in funding for grid resilience and distributed
energy programs in
January 2026.
Puerto Ricans, however, made early
pushes toward self-generation. Rooftop solar nearly doubled
in the year after Hurricane Maria. By
2020, engineering professor Agustín Irizarry Rivera
told The Intercept that it had become cheaper for
most energy users to “rely on solar panels than it is to
pay PREPA’s [Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority]
rates.” He is also a member of Queremos Sol, or “We Want
Sun,” one of several community coalitions advocating
distributed solar adoption.
In 2023, rooftop solar and
home battery and generator systems had become so popular
that Puerto Rico’s private grid operator, LUMA Energy, began
integrating them into the wider system through its
Customer Battery Energy Sharing (CBES) program. Privately
owned batteries and other DERs are now integrated into a virtual
power plant, allowing electricity stored in homes and
businesses to be dispatched during peak demand or
emergencies.
In June, during a power outage, for
example, residential solar and home battery storage company
Sunrun worked with LUMA to use energy from more than 33,000
homes to produce
30 MW during four-hour periods over two evenings. In
July, more than 70,000 household batteries provided 48 MW to
the grid and helped avert a widespread blackout, showing how
DERs can “respond to and help stabilize a stressed grid
faster and more flexibly than centralized generation,” according
to Pew Research.
Rooftop solar now supplies more
than 10 percent of the territory’s electricity and has
become Puerto Rico’s second-largest
power generation source after petroleum liquids. By
looking beyond the centralized system and failed attempts to
repair it, Puerto Rican households and businesses have
steadily constructed their own limited
alternatives.
Cuba Caught Between Decay and US
Pressure
Like nearby Puerto Rico, Cuba’s grid has
been battered by natural disasters, but its aging
centralized system, fuel shortages, and increased US
pressure under the Trump administration have compounded its
problems. On August 3, Cuba’s national electrical grid
collapsed for at least the sixth
time in 2026, after suffering another nationwide
blackout the day before.
More than 90
percent of Cuba’s electricity has traditionally come
from 16 major oil-fired thermoelectric plants, mostly built
between the 1960s and 1980s. The collapse of the Soviet
Union triggered
severe oil shortages in the 1990s, until later support
from Venezuela and Russia helped the system recover. But
Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba dropped
sharply after 2015, and the grid began suffering
repeated major failures from late
2024 onward, as fuel supplies dwindled and
US restrictions further constrained access to
imports.
With nine thermal plants offline due to
breakdowns and maintenance, a system with
roughly 3,000 MW of installed capacity was producing
just 1,278 MW at peak demand in April, Electric Choice
reports. Even Cuba’s long-used distributed
diesel generators, meant to keep critical systems
running, are mostly paralyzed due to their reliance on
imported diesel and fuel oil, while a US waiver allowing a
Russian tanker to deliver about 700,000 barrels of crude to
Cuba in
March provided enough fuel for only a few
weeks.
China has emerged as a crucial partner to fill
the gap. Beijing unveiled
a plan with the Cuban government in 2024 for 92
mid-sized solar parks with a combined capacity of 2,000 MW
by 2028, with dozens
online already. Spread across the island, alongside
at least 18 smaller models, the parks are relatively
quick to build and have reduced some of Cuba’s dependence
on its handful of crumbling large power
plants.
Chinese companies are also supplying equipment
commercially: solar panel exports from China to Cuba rose
from $3 million in 2023 to
$117 million in 2025, according to energy think tank
Ember. Households are also joining the movement—in
Havana’s wealthier areas, residents are
installing their own solar and battery systems to escape
the unreliable grid, but upfront cost limits adoption in
poorer areas.
Cuba’s decaying grid and pressure from
Washington give it few options. Household systems have been
able to reduce reliance on the old grid and distributed
solar parks have begun to spread electricity production
across the island, but growing uncertainty over Cuba’s
energy security appears set to remain for the foreseeable
future.
A Decentralized Future?
Ukraine,
Puerto Rico, and Cuba all face different challenges, but
collectively are struggling to keep their electricity
systems functioning. Their problems also mirror developments
emerging elsewhere. Observing Ukraine, Taiwan is decentralizing
its energy grid in response to potential
Chinese threats. With Chinese companies manufacturing
around 80
percent of the world’s solar panels, Latin American
countries are similarly looking to China for alternatives to
US political and economic dominance.
Ukraine and Cuba
have become testing grounds for Western countries and China
as both promote
their energy technologies abroad as part of geopolitical
competition. But the transformation is visible at the local
level, with Puerto Rico showing how unreliable centralized
systems and overlooking community needs can spur rapid
adoption of distributed energy solutions.
Countries
across the Global South are experimenting with
localized energy systems, “leapfrogging” centralized
grids that were never going to serve the remote rural
communities in these regions. Even the United States,
despite its wealth and abundant energy resources, can
benefit from the same approach. When some residents of Gary,
Indiana lost power for up to two weeks in August,
distributed systems could have provided valuable local
backup.
Scaling challenges, particularly for local
DERs, remain. But these examples show how to make
electricity systems more resilient by expanding generation
and storage across smaller networks; they are not just
suitable for countries facing war and geopolitical pressure
but can be adopted in any country where centralized systems
leave communities vulnerable to
disruption.
Author Bio: John P. Ruehl
is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington,
D.C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent
Media Institute. He is a contributor to several foreign
affairs publications, and his book, Budget
Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy
Smaller Than Texas’, was published in 2022. Follow
him on X @john_ruehl.
Credit
Line: This article was produced by Economy
for All, a project of the Independent Media
Institute.
