Rising concerns over global warming, environmental pollution, and energy security have increased interest in developing renewable and environmentally friendly energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and biomass as the replacements for fossil fuels.
Wind energy is indeed one stone that Kenya can use to kill the two birds; climate change and energy crisis since it essentially eliminates emissions of the Greenhouse gases and other harmful wastes associated with thermal and coal-fuel power plants or radioactive wastes in nuclear power plants. Moreover, Kenya can also earn millions of dollars in terms of carbon trading by exploring and investing in clean energy like wind power.
The country also stands to benefit a lot by diversifying the energy mix with a dramatic reduction of dependence on fossil fuels that are expensive and are prone to constant price increase, and supply instability. With diverse sources, the country will therefore have more than 15 per cent of its energy mix coming from Wind power especially after the commissioning of all the major Wind farms currently under development.
Apart from strengthening its energy security, a significant reduction on the Fuel Cost Charge will make electricity cheaper for Kenyans and attract industrial investors. Kenya is not alone in the path to tap wind energy; the last three decades has seen tremendous growth in wind power projects worldwide resulting in rise in annual installed wind generation capacity of 158 GW in 2009 to the current 197 GW and it still continues to rise.
The country’s grid connection with other regional power pools for energy trading makes a potential revenue source for the country to recoup the multibillion investments put in these projects. Wind energy represents a mainstream energy source of new power generation and an important player in the world’s energy mix.
As a leading current energy technology, wind power’s technical maturity and speed of deployment has been acknowledged as one of the most innovative technology in the recent times especially since there is no practical upper limit to the percentage of wind that can be integrated into the electrical energy system.
In fact, wind energy in principle could meet the entire energy needs of the whole world if properly annexed and utilized. Compared with traditional energy sources, wind energy has a number of benefits as an inexhaustible and free energy source, it is available and plentiful in most regions of the earth and in many other areas in Kenya like Kajiado and Marsabit counties. In addition, more extensive use of wind power would help reduce the demands for fossil fuels, which is not permanent but gets depleted day by day.
[BUSINESS] Why Kenya needs to think wind energy: Rising concerns over global warming, environmental pollution, and energy security have increased interest in developing renewable https://t.co/qMLjcF0nDU
— Breaking News (@News_Kenya) October 3, 2018