For Bloomberg, Krishna Karra and Stephen Wicary map blackouts in Cuba due to the U.S. administration’s block on fuel shipments.
Available electricity has plummeted since the start of the year. And it’s disproportionately affected rural areas and provincial hubs, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of satellite imagery. The level of light emitted at night in major eastern cities like Santiago de Cuba and Holguin has dropped as much as 50% compared to the historical average.
This analysis and others before it (see also the New Orleans power outage during Hurricane Ida and fading lights in Ukraine from war-damaged infrastructure) are made possible by NASA’s Black Marble, which tracks nightlight around the world and makes the data publicly available.
