Kenya Turns Up the Heat: KenGen's Geothermal Push Adds Clean Power to a Straining Grid

When most of us picture renewable energy, we picture solar panels glinting on a rooftop or wind turbines turning on a ridgeline. Kenya is quietly making the case for a different champion. In the volcanic Rift Valley north-west of Nairobi, the Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) is rehabilitating its ageing Olkaria I power plant to pump an additional 63 megawatts of geothermal electricity into the national grid, reinforcing a source of clean power that has been working around the clock for decades.

According to reporting by The Standard, the rehabilitation of Olkaria I is around 70 per cent complete, with the first turbine expected to come online in mid-2026 and the full upgrade delivering its extra capacity later in the year. It is part of a wider renewal of KenGen's older units, designed to squeeze more reliable, low-cost power out of existing fields rather than starting from scratch. Unlike solar and wind, which rise and fall with the sun and the weather, geothermal energy taps the constant heat of the earth, giving Kenya a dependable "baseload" that runs day and night, in every season.

This story sits at the meeting point of three Sustainable Development Goals. It speaks most directly to SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy): KenGen's Olkaria upgrade adds cheap, home-grown, round-the-clock geothermal power, cutting reliance on imported fuel and helping keep electricity both clean and affordable as demand climbs. It also advances SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), because rehabilitating ageing plants and extending transmission from the Rift Valley is fundamentally about building resilient, modern energy infrastructure that can carry a growing industrial economy. And it supports SDG 13 (Climate Action), since every megawatt of geothermal baseload displaces higher-emission thermal generation, shrinking Kenya's carbon footprint while strengthening its long-term energy security.

The timing matters. Kenya's appetite for electricity is climbing steadily as industries expand and more homes are connected to the grid, with national peak demand recently touching a record of about 2,362 megawatts. Geothermal already carries an outsized share of that load, supplying roughly 40 per cent of the country's electricity and standing as its single largest source by both installed capacity and generation. Each upgraded unit at Olkaria helps keep pace with demand without leaning on expensive, polluting thermal plants that burn imported fuel.

Kenya's geothermal story is not new, and that is precisely the point. The country has been generating power from its underground steam since the early 1980s, steadily building the expertise and infrastructure that have earned it a reputation as the "Iceland of Africa." Today it ranks among the world's leading geothermal producers, and its ambitions are still growing: national plans envisage lifting geothermal capacity from under 1,000 megawatts toward 3,000 megawatts in the years ahead, alongside expanding solar and other renewables.

The appeal is easy to understand. Geothermal power is home-grown, shielding Kenya from volatile global fuel prices and the currency pressures that come with importing diesel. It produces a fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil-fuel generation, aligning neatly with the country's climate commitments. And because the resource is effectively inexhaustible on human timescales, it offers the kind of long-term energy security that intermittent sources alone struggle to guarantee.

Challenges remain, of course. Drilling geothermal wells is capital-intensive and technically demanding, and moving new power from the Rift Valley to demand centres such as Nairobi still depends on upgrading transmission lines. But KenGen's incremental approach — refreshing proven plants like Olkaria I while exploring new fields — shows how a country can grow its clean-energy supply pragmatically. As the world races to decarbonise, Kenya is a reminder that the renewable future will not be powered by one technology alone, and that some of the most valuable clean energy has been beneath our feet all along.

Why it matters. Solar power tends to be the first source we think of when we think of renewable energy. However, there are other sources — such as geothermal energy — that have been used for decades and hold huge potential. Kenya's steady, long-running investment in geothermal shows what that potential looks like in practice: reliable, round-the-clock clean power drawn from the earth itself.