The Government of Kenya (GoK) recognizes that geothermal energy has potential to reduce overall cost of power generation in the country as a base load, cheaper, indigenous and secure fuel compared to expensive imported petroleum fuels.
At present geothermal power constitutes approximately 30% of Kenya’s electrical power mix, but 50% of the energy generated.
In order to lower the overall cost of electricity, Kenya needs to develop more geothermal power from its huge potential estimated to be more than 10,000 MW.
Through the concerted efforts of KenGen, GDC, private sector developers, Development partners and the GoK, Kenya has made significant strides in the development of geothermal energy. However, challenges still exist in developing these resources. There is room for geothermal investments by more private sector developers currently and into the near future.
The Ministry of Energy and Petroleum with the assistance from the World Bank is currently planning to hold an international geothermal investors conference for two days on 23rd and 24th May 2016 in Nairobi.
The key objective of the conference will be to showcase the achievements so far made, market available potential for geothermal investments and give opportunity to stakeholders to engage, critique the Kenya’s current policy, legal, regulatory institutional and other supportive frameworks and come up with the best ways to enable exploration and development of geothermal resources in the country going forward.
The Ministry of Energy and Petroleum is also currently developing a strategy for fast tracking geothermal exploration and development in Kenya. The investors’ conference will therefore contribute towards the geothermal strategy process.