After Cuba's Sixth Nationwide Blackout of 2026, a New Legal Study Asks If Energy Access Is a Right
On September 18, 2026, Cuba's power grid collapsed for at least the sixth time this year, cutting electricity to millions of people and to roughly 862,000 customers in Havana alone. The pattern is now well documented: a fuel import blockade since January 2026 has left the island almost entirely without new fuel shipments—only one tanker has arrived since March—while aging power infrastructure goes without the replacement parts needed to keep it running. Cuban officials have called the resulting blackouts "collective punishment"; residents describe a crisis that now touches food, water, transport, and healthcare, not just electricity.
What's less discussed is the legal question underneath the headlines: is access to energy a right at all, and if so, whose obligation is it to secure it? Theoretical and Legal Dimensions of the Right to Energy: From the Global Context to Cuba as Case Study, a new Springer monograph by José Grabiel Luis Cordova (University of Groningen), builds a systematic legal-theoretical answer—tracing how the right to energy has emerged in international and regional human rights instruments and been written into national constitutions—before testing that framework directly against Cuba's 2019 Constitution and its energy governance structure.
The book has three clear uses beyond the Cuban case itself. Comparative constitutional law courses can use it as a worked example of how an emerging social right gets constitutionalised, tested, and contested. Energy policy and human rights researchers get a rare legal-theoretical account of "right to energy" claims that most literature treats only as policy rhetoric. And legal scholars examining state accountability for recurring infrastructure failure have, in Cuba, a live case rather than a hypothetical.
For libraries, this fills a real gap: energy law collections are dense with regulatory and commercial titles but thin on rights-based treatments, and thinner still on Latin American case studies written for an international, English-language audience. It sits naturally alongside existing human rights, comparative constitutional law, and Latin American studies holdings.
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Q&A
What is the "right to energy" as this book defines it?
It is the legal-theoretical claim that energy access is an enforceable right rather than only a policy objective, examined through international, regional, and constitutional law.
Why does the book use Cuba as its case study?
Cuba's recurring nationwide blackouts throughout 2026 make it a live, well-documented test of how a state's constitutional and legal framework responds when energy access repeatedly fails.
Does the book address international human rights law, or only Cuban law?
Both: it first builds a general framework from international and regional human rights instruments before applying it specifically to Cuba's 2019 Constitution.
Who is this book written for?
Legal academics, energy policy researchers, comparative constitutional law scholars, and Latin American studies programs.
Where can I buy Theoretical and Legal Dimensions of the Right to Energy?
Directly from CLNZ Books at clnzbooks.com, with worldwide shipping and secure card or PayPal payment.