Kenya Can Produce 300 Megawatts of Bio-Energy

By Eric Ombok

Kenya, whose economy is the biggest in East Africa, has the potential to produce 300 megawatts of electricity from agricultural residues such as bagasse from the sugar industry, Assistant Energy Minister Mohamed Mahamud said.

The country, which gets 1 percent of its energy requirements from renewable sources, produces 38 megawatts from bagasse, the fiber that remains once juice is extracted from sugar cane, Mahamud told a Brazilian business and government delegation, led by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Nairobi, the capital.

“It is our desire to learn from the Brazilians best practices on bio-fuels in addition to other forms of renewable energy,” he said.

Brazil, the world’s biggest exporter of sugar and ethanol made from cane, has more than doubled output of the biofuel in the past six years to 27.5 billion liters (7.2 billion gallons) in 2009, according to industry group Unica.

--Editors: Ana Monteiro, Paul Richardson.

source: bloomberg