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Final Up to date on: seventeenth April 2025, 12:38 am
New IEA report highlights Kenya’s robust progress in increasing entry to electrical energy and clear cooking pushed by strong insurance policies and focused infrastructure investments
Kenya is on observe to realize common electrical energy entry by 2030, as formidable implementation plans and electrification utilizing clear power applied sciences place the nation as an financial and power improvement chief throughout the area, in response to the IEA’s new Power Coverage Evaluate of the nation.
With a sustained concentrate on electrification, electrical energy entry charges in Kenya rose from 37% in 2013 to 79% in 2023, with city areas already attaining full entry, the report notes. The Final Mile Connectivity Challenge (LMCP), launched in 2015, has performed a pivotal position in bringing electrical energy to 9 million individuals in rural areas and lowering the variety of individuals with out entry by almost half in just below a decade. Ongoing initiatives purpose to attach an extra 280,000 households throughout the nation by the top of 2025.
The report highlights Kenya’s management in off-grid photo voltaic adoption, with the nation accounting for almost three-quarters of all photo voltaic house system gross sales in East Africa in 2023. These off-grid options, significantly in distant and underserved communities, have turn out to be a key a part of Kenya’s electrification technique. At present, one in 5 Kenyan households makes use of solar-powered mini-grids or standalone techniques.
“Kenya is exhibiting how the strategic deployment of fresh power applied sciences and electrification in end-use sectors can considerably enhance the lives of hundreds of thousands of essentially the most weak individuals on the planet,” stated IEA Deputy Govt Director Mary Burce Warlick, who’s launching the report in Nairobi at present alongside Kenya’s Minister of Power and Petroleum J. Opiyo Wandayi.
The report coincides with the Kenyan authorities’s evaluation of its personal Nationwide Power Coverage. The IEA was a part of the stakeholder consultations from the start of the nationwide evaluation, offering inputs and suggestions all through the method.
The Draft Nationwide Power Coverage (NEP) 2025-2034 was offered by Minister Wandayi to key stakeholders earlier within the day, and confirmed that the suggestions from the IEA Power Coverage Evaluate had been thought-about within the improvement of the up to date NEP.
“The collaboration with the IEA got here at a very necessary second for Kenya, as we now have been endeavor a complete evaluation of our personal Nationwide Power Coverage. The IEA’s report affords well timed insights which have helped inform our personal coverage selections”, stated Minister Wandayi on the launch of the IEA’s Power Coverage Evaluate.
Low-emissions applied sciences are the cornerstone of Kenya’s electrical energy combine, with geothermal, hydro, wind and photo voltaic sources accounting for almost 90% of energy era. Kenya can be house to the Lake Turkana Wind Challenge, the biggest wind farm on the African continent, and has a number of the lowest price geothermal initiatives on the planet. Geothermal accounts for nearly one-third of the nation’s complete electrical energy era capability.
Kenya has considerably improved entry to wash cooking options over the previous decade, with an entry price of 10% in 2013 to over 30% in 2023. Regardless of this progress, hundreds of thousands of households throughout Kenya — primarily in rural areas — nonetheless depend on polluting fuels equivalent to firewood, charcoal and kerosene. The newly launched Kenya Nationwide Cooking Transition Technique (KNCTS) outlines a transparent roadmap to realize common entry to wash cooking by 2028. The IEA report highlights the significance of integrating clear cooking into broader power planning and guaranteeing steady provide chains for fuels and applied sciences as a method of overcoming essentially the most cussed limitations to uptake, which embody gas value volatility and the excessive price of improved cookstoves relative to family budgets.
The report additionally underscores Kenya’s efforts to modernise and develop its electrical energy grid. New laws launched in 2024 open transmission and distribution networks to non-public funding, aiming to extend competitors, scale back prices and enhance effectivity. Kenya’s energy networks, nonetheless, nonetheless face excessive losses — estimated at 23% in 2023 — attributable to technical points, theft, and billing issues. Good grid options and higher administration techniques are into consideration to deal with these losses, the report notes.
Whereas challenges stay in areas equivalent to affordability and regulatory coordination, the IEA concludes that Kenya is effectively positioned to satisfy its long-term power and improvement targets. With robust coverage frameworks, a talented workforce and a excessive renewable power potential, Kenya is paving the way in which towards a extra inclusive, sustainable and safe power future.
The IEA usually conducts evaluations of power and local weather associated insurance policies and supplies suggestions — a course of that helps power coverage improvement and encourages the alternate of worldwide greatest practices and experiences.
Information launch from IEA.
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