Kenya's main electricity producer KenGen yesterday commissioned an extra 140 megawatt (MW) to the national grid from geothermal plant at Olkaria 1 Geothermal Station in Kenya.  KenGen's expansion efforts are part of the Government of Kenya broader ambitions to add 5,000 MW to Kenya's power output by 2017, with the goal of boosting economic growth. Currently Kenya relies heavily on renewable energy sources from hydroelectric and geothermal power production. With challenges in climatic conditions overreliance of hydroelectricity energy sources is not sustainable as a result of declining water levels in various dams due to drought, which result in switching to costly diesel power electricity generation

Geothermal electricity is electricity generated from geothermal energy. Technologies in use include dry steam power stations, flash steam power stations and binary cycle power stations (Wikipedia) Geothermal power is considered to be sustainable because the heat extraction is small compared with the Earth's heat content. The life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of geothermal electric stations are on average 45 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity, or less than 5 percent of that of conventional coal-fired plants.

Kenya?s economy is expected to grow by 6 per cent this year raising demand and piling pressure on the 1900MW currently installed capacity. Increasing additional sustainable energy to the national grid will lower the price of electricity hence attracting investors resulting to development through business activities and industries being set up.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_electricity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkaria_I_Geothermal_Power_Station