Impacts of climate change can be curbed through the adoption of renewable energy sources, experts say.
Climate-related disasters, such as drought and floods have in recent past been more intense and recurrent in Kenya.
The impacts of the climate-related disasters are felt at the household level through lack of food and water, damage to property, and increased prices of food and fuel.
The prolonged and chronic droughts are increasing due to poor or failed rains caused by climate change. Drought conditions in late 2017 and early 2018 left 3.4 million people severely food insecure and an estimated 500,000 people without access to water.
According to Igad, 3.5 million Kenyans are cyrrently in dire need of food and the National Drought Management Authority has warned the situation is worsening in 16 of the 23 arid and semi-arid counties. They are Marsabit, Mandera, Wajir, Samburu, Isiolo, Baringo and Turkana.
Another nine are in alert phase. They are Garissa, Kilifi, Kitui, Kwale, Laikipia, Lamu, Meru (North), Nyeri (Kieni) and West Pokot.
In November 2021, President Uhuru Kenyatta told the international community that Kenya is determined and on course to achieving full transition to clean energy by 2030.
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President Kenyatta told world leaders at Glashow Cop26 meeting that renewable energy accounts for 73 per cent of Kenya’s installed power generation capacity, while 90 per cent of electricity in use is from green sources among them geothermal, wind, solar and hydro-electric installations.
He said Kenya was on course to achieving a target of 100 per cent use of clean energy by 2030 and to achieve 100 per cent access to clean cooking by 2028.
But experts in webinar say a lot still needs to be done to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.
The experts took the media through opportunities that the renewable energy offers against adverse impacts of climate change during a webinar.
Pan African Climate Justice Alliance lead Eugene Nforngwa said the impacts of climate change have disrupted rainfall patterns, seasonality, and frequency of rains and timing of rains.
He wondered why countries were preferring fossil fuels yet they have abundant renewable energy.
“Transitioning to renewable energy is good for countries,” he said, adding that there is need to change how we produce and use energy.
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Nforngwa said there is need to redirect freed resources from fossils to renewable energy.
Thomas Opande, Lead Africa Energy Access Initiative, said out of 1.2 billion people in Africa, 700 million do not have electricity.
Opande cited weak policy framework as well as unfavorable policies for the low uptake of renewable energy in Africa and lack of subsidy on solar panels as well as access to finance.
The continent’s geothermal resources are found in the East Africa Rift System, where an estimated 15 GW of potential remains untapped.
At the end of 2020, Kenya was the continent’s only substantial producer of electricity from geothermal power, with a generation capacity of 823.8 MW.
But despite the potential of renewable energy, emission of green house gases into the atmosphere was peaking.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report showed that reducing green house gas emissions across the full energy sector requires major transitions, including a substantial reduction in overall fossil fuel use, the deployment of low-emission energy sources, switching to alternative energy carriers, and energy efficiency and conservation.
Kenya says it will promote the transition to clean cooking with alternative clean fuels, such as LPG, ethanol and other clean fuels in urban areas and, clean biomass (charcoal and wood) cook stoves or other alternatives in rural areas as one way of addressing some of the challenges.
However, its additional of taxes on LPG is counterproductive as more people cannot afford the commodity. KRA imposed a 16 per cent Value Added Tax LPG beginning July 1, 2021, pushing up the price of cooking gas upwards of Sh300 in most outlets.
Research by the University of Liverpool, University College London and Moi University in collaboration with the Kenyan ministries of Health and Energy found that half of urban households cooking with LPG in Western Kenya decreased their consumption following the VAT reintroduction.
Three quarters of these households consequently reported cooking more frequently with polluting alternatives such as charcoal and wood.
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