- British Independent Power Producer (IPP) Globeleq is laying the foundation stone for its Menengai geothermal power plant in the Rift Valley in western Kenya.
- The facility will have a capacity of 35 MWe.
At the Menengai location, geothermal resource extraction is well under way. In western Kenya’s Nakuru County, the British Independent Power Producer (IPP) recently set the cornerstone for its geothermal power plant. Rigathi Gachagua, the vice president of Kenya, and Jane Marriott, the British High Commissioner to Kenya, both attended the ceremony.
Technically, the Japanese corporation Toyota Tsusho Corporation is building the steam power plant, and it has hired the assistance of its fellow countryman Fuji Electric to install the turbine and the electrical generator. The Kenyan government-owned Geothermal Development Company (GDC), which has already dug several production wells at the plant and will run and maintain it once it is operational in 2025, will provide the steam to Globeleq.
The Kenyan and British governments support the construction of the steam plant, which will cost $108 million. In 2022, the British government announced an investment of approximately $4 billion in Kenya, including a portion of the Menengai project, on the margins of the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27).
The African Development Bank (AfDB), the Trade and Development Bank of Eastern and Southern Africa (TDB), and a Finnish investor, Finnfund, all sponsor the Menengai geothermal project. These financial organisations have given Globeleq loans totalling $72 million. The state-owned corporation Kenya Power will purchase the electricity generated at Menengai for 25 years.