Africa has been urged to take full advantage of the geothermal energy resources in the continent to fast-track the continent’s energy requirements.
The Chairman of Kenya Electricity Generation Company (KenGen), Julius Migos Ogamba, made the call at the just ended 25th Africa Energy Forum in Nairobi, Kenya.
He noted that energy efficiency, cost-effectiveness in the sector and cleanliness of geothermal energy offer Africa the unique opportunity to embrace this renewable energy to save the continent from her fast-degrading environment.
The conference, which is hosting 4,000 delegates across Africa and other parts of the world, creates the environment for participants to share their views on how to foster swift, prudent, practical and innovative suggestions in the continent’s desire to access cheap, reliable and sustainable energy for its people.
“For Kenya, this forum will provide us the opportunity to engage like-minded participants in clean energy generation, sustainable financing and innovative strategies to be employed in the sector for enhanced delivery,” Julius Migos Ogamba observed.
According to him, the platform also gives them the chance to strike investment partnerships in the sector to drive the area in Kenya particularly and Africa in general.
Concerning best governance cultural practices, the KenGen Chairman stressed that they adhere to the latest virtues in the industry and hopes to even deepen such practices to ensure that Africa’s future energy generations do not suffer from any negative environmental norms.
Africa has a huge geothermal potential, particularly in the Rift Valley, which extends from the Horn of Africa to Malawi.
The geothermal potential capacity for eastern Africa is more than 20 Gigawatts.
High geothermal power potential is located in eastern African countries such as Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia. The potential for geothermal energy in East Rift System countries is estimated at over 15,000megawatts.
Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Energy and Petroleum, Davis Chirchir said they have been able to provide over 76 per cent of the people in the East African nation with electricity and hope to increase it further by the end of this year.
He emphasised that Kenya has vast land resources and that getting access to geothermal was easy, assuring all that reliance on traditional sources of fuel and its negative impact on the environment could be further reduced if they keep to geothermal and other renewable sources of energy.
Honourable Chirchir also urged participants to share their experiences and ideas to help Africa to deal with Africa’s environmental degradation, help to make energy cheap and also leverage their resources to take solutions for energy problems facing the continent.
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com