Steam offers solution in droughtprone East Africa
As climate change depletes hydroelectric reservoirs, other forms of clean energy are filling the gap. Maina Waruru, of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports from Nairobi.
IN February, Kenyans awoke to news that has become an annual ritual: authorities were considering temporarily shutting down hydroelectric dams, the country’s largest source of electricity.
The reason was the one given each dry season for the past four years: too long without rain had left too little water in the reservoirs.
Kenya Power Ltd, the national electricity utility, has so far always managed to avoid a full shutdown, instead turning off just a few turbines at a time. But to make up the gap it has turned to more expensive, and polluting, diesel generators to keep the country plugged in.
Now, however, geothermal power may help fill the gap. Over more than a decade, Kenya has invested more than
$US1 billion in tapping the country’s underground steam, including a $US400 million loan from Japan to develop geothermal wells that are expected to come online in 2019 with 140MW of new power.
The country already gets about 675MW, about a quarter of its total needs, from geothermal power, making it Africa’s largest geothermal producer and the eighthlargest in the world, according to the country’s Energy Regulatory Commission.
With new green power being added from geothermal, solar and wind energy, hydroelectricity now accounted for just 45% of the country’s energy mix, down from around 60% a decade ago, energy principal secretary Joseph Njoroge said.
That had helped shore up supplies and hold the line on prices, said Isaac Kiva, the renewable energy secretary in the energy ministry.
‘‘Kenya’s decision over the years to invest in geothermal energy has ensured relative stability in power supply to consumers, allowing as well relative stability in electricity costs.’’
Kenya has tapped less than 10% of the geothermal energy it would like to. Experts say reserves of steam in the Rift Valley region could generate up 10,000MW, double the target set by the Government’s Vision 2030 development plan.
Geothermal could help many countries in East Africa tap into more sustainable, reliable and clean energy in a region that is facing worsening droughts linked to climate change. The region is estimated to have a geothermal potential of more than 22,000MW, according to the African Rift Geothermal Development Facility, a project of the United Nations Environment Programme.
It believes Kenya and Ethiopia lead in terms of that potential with 10,000MW each. The nexthighestranked countries, Djibouti, Tanzania and Uganda, range from 1000MW to 450MW.
Geothermal could generate nearly half of Tanzania’s current installed electricity capacity, more than half of Uganda’s and more than double Ethiopia’s, the project noted.
Exploring for and developing geothermal energy has high initial costs, a problem shared by many renewable energy technologies. But, once in place, ‘‘geothermal provides for a cheap source of energy to many countries’’, Adnan Amin, head of the International Renewable Energy Agency, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Amin noted that Kenya’s electricity tariffs had dropped 30% overall in the past few years, despite hydroelectricity shortages.
Costs as high as $US5 million to drill a single geothermal exploration well could deter investment, he said, but improving technology and investment models should help cut the cost in the future.
In Kenya, for instance, government investment in geothermal exploration and test drilling, combined with offers to buy geothermal power at attractive rates, had made it easier and less risky for private investors to step in, Amin said.
That was one reason Kenya had more than 650MW of geothermal power and Ethiopia only 8MW, though Ethiopia was now moving to develop 1000MW, he said.
Joseph Kabyemera, head of the African Development Bank’s Climate Development Fund, said countries could get geothermal power faster by tapping into things like the Geothermal Risk Mitigation Fund for East Africa.
The facility, established by the African Union, aims to encourage government and private investment in geothermal power by providing grants for exploration studies.