HAVANA - Cuba has solved crippling energy shortages that plagued the island as recently as 2004 without sacrificing a long-term commitment to promoting environmentally friendly fuels, the head of the U.N. Environment Program said Wednesday.

The electric grid still relies too heavily on wasteful gas-flare reactors and heavy polluting diesel generators, but the communist government has taken important steps toward developing wind and solar power, as well as ethanol from sugar cane, said Achim Steiner, the program's executive director.

"Cuba a few years ago was facing a real energy crisis, 16 hours of ... electricity cuts and therefore a realization that the economy was going to collapse under this system," said Steiner, in Havana for a conference on the environment and development.

[...............]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070704/ap_o...4xG0iQB9g.3IxIF