With blackouts of 15 hours or more now routine in Havana, small businesses running on generators and solar panels have become the island’s most reliable source of daily bread, at prices many cannot afford.
The 10-megawatt plant in the Roseau Valley, nearly 20 years in the making, is the first geothermal generator in the Eastern Caribbean and a test of whether volcanic islands can escape imported fuel.
More than 1,500 households have been relocated from the eroding Langue de Barbarie to a new settlement eight kilometers away, the largest planned retreat from the sea in West Africa, and a test of whether fishermen can live far from their boats.
Illegal gold mining has loaded the Pra and Ankobra rivers with so much silt and mercury that a treatment plant serving 400,000 people shut its intake this month, forcing the government into a military crackdown it has tried before.
