Knowledge fuels change - Support energypedia!
For over 10 years, energypedia has been connecting energy experts around the world — helping them share knowledge, learn from each other, and accelerate the global energy transition.
Today, we ask for your support to keep this platform free and accessible to all.
Even a small contribution makes a big difference! If just 10–20% of our 60,000+ monthly visitors donated the equivalent of a cup of coffee — €5 — Energypedia would be fully funded for a whole year.
Is the knowledge you’ve gained through Energypedia this year worth €5 or more?
Your donation keeps the platform running, helps us create new knowledge products, and contributes directly to achieving SDG 7.
Thank you for your support, your donation, big or small, truly matters!
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.
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.
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.
