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{
    "id": 424048,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/424048/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 112,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Energy in this country is a very big challenge to the growth of our economy. When you look back – I truly salute the contributions from Sen.Khalwale and Prof. Lesan – Kenya is a very rich but yet a very poor country. It is very rich in terms of resources and very poor in terms of our incapacity and inability to fully and positively exploit these resources for the benefit of the people of this country and region. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, today statistics show that out of every ten to 15 foreign investors coming in this region, only two are ending up in Kenya. The rest are going to Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda. One of the reasons this is so is because of the very exorbitant cost of energy in Kenya. Today, a kilowatt hour of electricity in Kenya is going for 19 US cents. Compare that with Tanzania where it is going for about 12 US cents and about 13 US cents in Uganda and they are still lowering it. The other day I was in Uganda and saw that Bujagali Hydro Electric Plant has come on board. Karuma and Murchison Falls are under construction. They are truly exploiting the natural resources that the Nile offers to their country. What did we do in Kenya? At Independence, for some strange reason, we designed and put seven hydro plants on one river system whose water flow is unstable. I have no difficulty with us having hydro plants, as many as we can, on the same river if we are endowed with heavy flow of water like in Brazil, Congo and so on. But where river water volumes drop suddenly because of lack of adequate rain, one would have expected – these are the recommendations made over and over again – that as we develop the Tana River system, we have equally important rivers like Nzoia, Sondu Miriu, Kuja and so on, that would have been alternative sources of hydro plants. Rivers like Kuja and Nzoia have a very stable flow throughout the year. Tana River has a very strong flow half the year and the other half goes down. Everytime it goes down, it affects our hydro production, yet hydro remains our cheapest and most reliable renewable source of energy. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, but now - I speak with authority, having been the first regulator of electricity in this country – our geothermal capacity and resources available are sufficient to generate at full production over 5,000 megawatts of power. This is contained in this Report as well. It has been studied and designed that geothermal power will come on stream and for use at as little as six to eight US cents per kilowatt hour. That is less than half of what we are paying today, because we have unstable hydro and hydro carbons being used to produce power in the Independent Power Producers (IPPs). We also have geothermal plants like the one in Kipevu. We import oil and then have to generate electricity out of it. But now that we have focused, and I am very happy with what is going on in the geothermal sector--- If you fly over Lake Naivasha, Olkaria and the Menengai Crater, you will be amazed at the amount of work going on; the drilling of wells, capping of those wells and eventual generation of power. The interest being shown is enormous. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, what we would want to see, as a Senate and the House that oversights counties, is that the communities that have been the custodians of these resources for years on, are taken into account. I would hate to see a situation, like we have in Turkwel, where the custodians of the gorge and river can only see pylons wheezing when the wind blows over their heads as they head to the more privileged parts The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}