Kenya Shows Renewables Scope to Plug Africa's Power Supply Gaps

Most visitors to Hell’s Gate national park, 75km north-west of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, go there to see the wildlife and rock formations. But they usually leave with an additional memory: the intense geothermal activity after which the park is named. The Kenyan government has been harnessing this clean energy source for decades.

Kenya Electricity Generating Company, the government-controlled company that produces about 75 per cent of the country’s power, reckons that 47 per cent of Kenya’s energy consumption is from geothermal. Hydro accounts for 39 per cent, conventional coal, gas and oil-fired generators 13 per cent and wind 1 per cent.

Few countries in sub-Saharan Africa are as lucky as Kenya to have such a large supply of reliable clean energy. The challenge facing not only east Africa’s dominant economy but the whole continent is the extent to which it can drive its economic development through producing clean energy.

The demand is massive. More than 640m Africans, almost two-thirds of the continent’s population, have no access to electricity, according to the African Development Bank. It estimates that per capita annual power consumption in sub-Saharan Africa is 181 kilowatt hours, compared with 6,500 kWh in Europe and double that in the US.

https://www.ft.com/content/aa11cc7e-3567-11e7-99bd-13beb0903fa3

Martin Abegglen

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