Background: Caribbean Sugar Economies
From the 17th century onward, the Caribbean became a global center for sugar production, primarily driven by European demand for luxury goods. Islands like Jamaica, Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti), Barbados, and Cuba were dominated by sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. Sugar wasn’t just a commodity; it was a status symbol in Europe, used in tea, coffee, and confectionery.
Sugar production was incredibly lucrative. For example, Saint-Domingue became France’s wealthiest colony in the 18th century, supplying roughly 40% of the world’s sugar by the 1780s.
Plantations relied on monoculture, meaning the local economies were almost entirely dependent on sugar and related industries (rum, molasses, shipping).
The European elites who consumed sugar considered it a luxury good, which further drove prices and profits.
Napoleonic Wars and the Sugar Embargo
When the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) erupted, global trade networks were disrupted. France, Britain, and their allies imposed blockades and embargoes against each other:
The Continental System (1806–1814)
Napoleon tried to cut off Britain from European markets.
Caribbean colonies loyal to France were affected because British naval dominance meant blockades disrupted shipments of sugar to Europe.
British Naval Blockades
British blockades targeted French Caribbean colonies, strangling their ability to export sugar.
Many French islands were occupied or destroyed during naval campaigns, further halting sugar production.
Collapse of Labor Systems
In French colonies like Saint-Domingue, slave uprisings and the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) had already devastated the plantations.
By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, large-scale sugar production in French colonies had largely collapsed.
Enters Sugar Beet
By the early 19th century, the Caribbean sugar industry, once a source of immense wealth, faced an unexpected technological and economic disruption: the rise of the sugar beet. Unlike the destructive forces of war, revolution, or embargoes, this was an industrial innovation that undercut sugar cane’s monopoly on sweetness in Europe.
The Rise of the Sugar Beet
Scientists and industrialists in Europe, particularly France and Germany, discovered that sugar could be extracted efficiently from the beetroot.
The Napoleonic Wars had already restricted Caribbean cane sugar imports, creating a strong incentive to produce sugar locally in Europe.
By the 1810s–1820s, beet sugar factories began producing sugar cheaper and more reliably than the Caribbean cane supply could, without relying on transatlantic trade.
Geopolitical Safety
Cane sugar relied on long, vulnerable shipping routes, subject to naval blockades, embargoes, and war.
Beet sugar, grown in Europe itself, was immune to maritime disruption and could be produced even during continental conflicts.
This made beet sugar a strategically safer and economically predictable alternative for European consumers and governments.
Market Impacts: Sugar Cane Collapses
Sugar beet’s lower cost and local availability caused European sugar prices to drop.
Caribbean plantations, already weakened by wars, revolutions, and labor crises, could not compete with cheaper beet sugar.
Cane sugar lost its luxury status, becoming just another sweetener, while profits for Caribbean plantation owners plummeted.
End of the Golden Era
Islands that had thrived on sugar cane wealth—Saint-Domingue, Martinique, Jamaica, Barbados—saw their economies shrink and diversify.
Many plantations were abandoned or converted to other crops (coffee, cotton, cocoa), but few could restore the former riches sugar cane had generated.
In essence, the sugar beet was the final blow to the Caribbean sugar cane empire: it made sugar cheap, abundant, local, and politically safe, destroying the exclusivity and profitability that had made sugar cane the backbone of colonial wealth.
And the cane had to be re-diverted mainly to rum use, while the rest of the land was used for other crops.
Today we have this happening with EVs after the first blockade of oil post-2022:
Booming share in renewables in electricity and shrinking share of fossil fuel in
China
And the idea that China’s growth in power production is due to Coal is false.
Here is the data.
In Europe
In Australia
Basically, replace cane by natural gas, sugar cane by natural gas for electricity, and rum re-focus by petrochemical use of natural gas.
Now those are the cost curves for renewables and batteries.
So logically, the new installation of fossil fuel capacity in power is not going much of anywhere.
Share of fossil fuel capacity in new projects is plunging.
And the Director of the International Renewable Energy Agency is very clear about why: it’s about cost now.
The idea that the renewables boom is leading to higher prices could not be more false; the blatant falsification is Spain.
Spain has three times better reliability in its grid than the US over a 15-year period, compared to the US, which is “rich” in natural gas.
Metrics of reliability
Key grid stability / reliability metrics
SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index)
Average total outage time per customer per year (usually in minutes)
SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index)
Average number of outages per customer per year
CAIDI (Customer Average Interruption Duration Index)
Average duration of each outage (SAIDI ÷ SAIFI)
The same plunge in cost due to renewables is happening in Mexico, with a 45% cost advantage for industrial parks and mines using 20 MW self-generated solar and storage off-grid, with no subsidies.
Anyone who doubts that this cost plunge is possible could consider that in the US, the country with cheap natural gas, now more than 50% of all renewable projects do not require subsidies to be viable.
I have been studying the renewable industry for many years. In 2011, the costs were crazy for solar—completely uneconomical, basically a 100% subsidy story. And I was considering the economics of this thinking: “One day we will have an event horizon, a moment when renewables can be viable even in a country that has cheap or relatively cheap fossil fuel.”
That was my benchmark, my evidence that we had reached the event horizon.
https://www.ft.com/content/35edc55a-3860-4d6e-9963-fc7067516b80
And for oil? Same story: this is the penetration of EVs in various countries in only five years.
Replace cane by oil, sugar cane by gasoline and diesel, refocus on petrochemicals by refocus on rum.
Those are the shares of use for oil:
- Road transport: 45%
- Power generation: 3% (in small islands or Djibouti—Djibouti cutting power generation to zero by 2020)
- Residential and commercial heating: 7%
That’s what is getting horrendous competition because China went from 4.7% to 48% in five years. What happens when they reach 96% like Norway?
(They are also aiming at 70% by 2027–2028.)
The reason is obvious there too.
Just like the sugar beet, both renewables and EVs have plunging costs and are geopolitically safe, not subject to long shipping routes.
And here are the cost-per-mile comparisons in various countries:
Brazil
China
The reason to buy EVs there? Green does not cross their minds—just cost.
India
So evidently, the cane planters have to fight to prop up prices by removing capacity—they fight against each other. The chief cane planter, Mr. Trump, was worried about the capacity of Venezuela and Iran.
And the problem was this: just before Venezuela, the price of oil was at 53 USD.
And what did “the” Permian driller of West Texas, the former CEO of Pioneer, say a couple of months before?
Permian has a problem of Tier-1 inventory that will go away so you will need a higher cost of Oil because productivity of Rock all else equal (yes not all else is equal, there is a bit of gains of productivity, but a depletion of rocks is a tall order)
https://youtu.be/JDsAb3Ebo3U?t=139
There is too much oil.
https://youtu.be/JDsAb3Ebo3U?t=157
Permian does not work below 50-55 USD.
https://youtu.be/JDsAb3Ebo3U?t=173
So, in order for Texas not to go bankrupt, less oil supply was needed.
TADA, Venezuela and Iran
However,
I urge you to think about the demand for sugar cane when people use sugar beet—or what happens when China pulls another 45% increase in EV sales penetration in 5% as a percentage of new sales, while Europe and India follow through.
Or when Pervoskite Solar (with a launch this year apparently by Panasonic followed by LONGi probably in 2027-2028 with 50% efficiency jump), or when Sodium grid Batteries by CATL hit the market?
Some people have massive exposure to “sugar beet” in their portfolio; I consider myself one of them.