Kenya: Africa’s first grid-connected anaerobic digestion plant fires up
The 2.2 MW Gorge Farm Energy Park, developed in Kenya’s Nakuru Country, will use local crop waste to create biogas for electricity generation.
The developer in charge of the plant, Tropical Power, said the $7.5m plant could reduce the country’s carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 7,000 tonnes each year, and will have a payback period of six years.
Kinuthia Mbugua, governor of Nakuru County, says the project would provide a boost to the country’s energy security. ‘The Gorge Farm Energy Park is a showcase project for Nakuru Country, Kenya and the African continent,’ he says in a statement. The energy plant will also be used as a research facility for scientists at Oxford University, who will study the facility to identify ways of advancing the technology so it can compete with conventional fossil fuel power generation.
Mike Mason, chairman of Tropical Power, says the plant demonstrates how clean energy can be cost-effective. He further stated that ‘through the Gorge Farm Energy Park, we aim to displace expensive and imported generation fuels – like diesel and heavy fuel oil – from Kenya’s distributed power mix,’ he says. ‘The Gorge Farm AD Plant is proof that locally produced feedstock can generate clean and cost effective distributed power’.
Source: Bioenergy News
Read more here.
