According to the UN Sustainable Development Group, in 2021, more than half of the African continent’s energy consumption came from renewable sources. Kenya sources up to 91% of its energy from renewables, with geothermal power making up nearly half of that share. CNN’s Victoria Rubadiri saw how Kenya, with its abundance of green energy, plans to share its resources with neighbouring countries.
Around 120 kilometres outside of Nairobi, Kenyan electricity generating company KenGen has provided a mix of steam wells, drilling rigs, and power stations. Geothermal Resource Assessment Manager, Daniel Saitet, explains the capacity of this location for KenGen’s resources, “Kenya currently hosts the largest geothermal power station and the largest single step development for geothermal resources globally.”
KenGen’s power plant feeds into a larger generation capacity of 1,725 megawatts, which includes hydro, thermal, and wind, which the company says is enough electricity to power up to 1.7 million homes. Saitet says that, “Over 90%” of this is already green electricity.
In the next five years, the country has an ambitious goal of getting 100% of its energy from renewable sources, a portion of which will be from geothermal. Saitet explains the challenges companies are facing trying to achieve this, “Geothermal is cost intensive and we currently at all carrier have in excess of 340 wells that are being drilled over the years. And on average, the cost of a well is about 6.5 million US dollars. That is quite enormous. And we also have five plants. Each of them costing several million dollars.”
Managing director at the Kenya Electricity Transmission Co. Ltd., KETRACO, John Mativo tells Rubadiri how their latest expansion should allow them to fulfil nearly all of Kenya’s peak electricity demand, “We are basically talking about a substation that has a capacity of anything like 3,000 or 4,000 megawatts of power serving the country. So, it’s core to any electricity that is coming from geothermal and wind power to the rest of the country and power from Ethiopia to the rest of the country.”
The Eastern Africa Electricity Highway is part of a wider project for the eastern African power pool which brings together 13 countries to collaborate on how to meet rising demand and ensure backup supplies are readily available. Mativo explains how energy players are moving towards a single market for Africa, “One of the things we’re discussing when we look at the bigger market in Africa is to try to ensure African countries do not lump tariff on tariff and tariff […]. We should not double charge everybody on the line to make power expensive. So that has to be agreed on a common tariff on transmission to allow African countries to be able to trade freely.”
This interview was featured in a recent episode of Connecting Africa on CNN International.