KENYA AND ITS PART IN REDUCING GLOBAL WARMING (part 1)

WIND 
Many of you .ke citizens have been to the north of the country. The dry north with its numerous whirl winds, sand storms, strong winds and the hell’s kitchen temperatures. Since independence the only available power source we had was hydrothermal power plants which provided electricity for the urban elites. The rural folk got used to firewood until Wangari Mathai came along. She was a rural folk make no mistake about that but she foresaw doom with this trend. Here is how that scenario played out. The urban had all the electricity and the rural folk made away with all the trees. In the beginning it was a harmless unrelated relationship. But then the trees started reducing in number in effect the rains measured mm less in the rain gauges. In effect they started rationing the water supplied to the turbines because it could run out and the factories would had to be closed up and the rich could not afford to stay without electricity. The rural folk didn’t know this at that time but they were helping to bring electricity to their homes. So when the government was alerted to this disparity in energy supply they sought to stop the rural folk from cutting down the trees by starting the rural electrification project to reduce usage of trees in farm use.  But the damage was already done and so now the government is trying to look for other energy sources to help supply the ever rising demand for energy.

Ngong hills just outside Nairobi was to host the 1^st  pilot project wind turbines in the country. Why they didn’t choose the very effective winds in the north is still up for debate. It however seemed to have worked out well with the 300mw wind project in Turkana, the biggest wind project in Africa apparently, yet to start it could provide much needed relief to the energy crises the country almost fell to.

In my opinion Kenya should be divided into energy zones to ease on the strain of putting all the energy into one national grid. The wind energy in the north could be divided with some of it taken to the national grid and the chunk of it used exclusively by the inhabitants of the northern half of the country. Almost every part of the country has the potential of producing its own energy and if the supply proves to be insufficient then the national grid comes into play. With resort cities, railway lines and meat factories in the works for the north in vision 2030 this could help in provision of energy for the north who have been in the receiving end of economic injustices from this government and the past two in resource allocation.