Kenya Energy Situation

1.1 Energy Sector

The energy sector in Kenya is largely dominated by petroleum and electricity, with wood fuel providing the basic energy needs of the rural communities, urban poor, and the informal sector. An analysis of the national energy shows heavy dependency on wood fuel and other biomass that account for 68% of the total energy consumption (petroleum 22%, electricity 9%, others 1%). Due to increased poverty, there is a significant shift to non-traded traditional biomass fuels. The proportion of households consuming biomass has rose to 83% from 73% in 1980.

While the Government of Kenya deliberately seeks reforms in the energy sector by encouraging private sector ownership and implementing policies that support diversification of energy sources, several specific steps to off-set current vulnerabilities have yet to be taken.

Kenya produces only 700 engineers annually. This amount is inadequate to meet the challenges of expanding and diversifying the country’s energy system. Several key instruments supporting increased resilience in the energy system such as the availability of flood maps, existence and enforcement of power plant siting and construction guidelines and emergency plans to react to extreme weather events are not available. Even though the country depends heavily on hydropower systems for electricity supply, there are no national plans for optimising hydropower plants operation under alternative future flow regimes. Moreover dams are not equipped with desilting gates nor are upstream land use management systems in place.

Charcoal, firewood, paraffin, LPG continue to be the main sources of cooking fuel. At the national level 68.8% of the households use firewood as the main cooking fuel with 84.4% being in the rural areas. Many are engaged in production, transformation, transportation and sale of wood and charcoal, making it one of the most important sources of paid livelihood. As a result woody biomass is diminishing due to poor management and utilization in unsustainable ways. Government ministries are supporting in one way or the other the sustainable production of energy crops, trade of charcoal and the dissemination of improved cooking stoves.

Despite the fact that traditional biomass dominates the energy landscape, little or no budget is provided for research, development and dissemination for heat and drought resistant crops, biofuels and modern biomass energy use. While some progress has been made in disseminating efficient wood and charcoal stoves, more needs to be done. New initiatives to promote feed-in tariffs for renewable energy are important elements in building more diversity and strengthening the resilience of the energy system.

1.2 Problem Situation

Fuelwood is the main leading energy resource for Kenya. In spite of this, very little progress has been made in adopting efficient technologies for biomass utilization. A high population use firewood for cooking - 87.5% of the population use traditional three stones technology for the same. A recent baseline survey by GTZ showed that only 4.8% of the households used the improved maendeleo stoves. Uptake of ICSs by institutions is also low. 34.95% of people without improved stoves did not know where to get them although they desired to acquire them. GTZ, Ministry of Agriculture, Energy and ITDG have been involved in the promotion of improved stoves but there has not been a major financial commitment from development partners to support the intervention to sustainably promote ICS's. Current improved stove production centres do not meet the demands of the project focal areas, let alone the country especially in the Arid and Semi Arid regions which need them more than any other region in the country. This has largely contributed to unsustainable harvesting of biomass with negative impacts on the environment and poor health among users due to excessive inhaling of noxious gases. upscaling of improved cook stoves is therefore necessary.