SkyPower to develop 1GW of solar projects in Kenya

The company, which develops and owns solar energy projects, advised media this morning that it will sign the deal with Kenya’s ministry for energy and petroleum.

The GES2015 played host not just to Kenya’s “favourite son” (while Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, his father is from Kenya), but also the Republic’s president, H.E. Uhuru Kenyatta, along with leading entrepreneurs and high-level government officials from around the world.

Energy Principal Secretary Joseph Njoroge (left), SkyPower Global President Kerry Adler (centre) and SkyPower Global Executive Vice President Charles Cohen sign deals for renewable energy at the United Nations Compound in Nairobi on Saturday.

The agreement includes development of 200MW of fabrication and assembly facilities, and a $173m investment in education, training, and research and development.

The agreement was signed between the company and the Kenyan Ministry of Energy and Petroleum. “Sustainable electrification is a central policy issue in Kenya, and we are committed to making this a reality for our citizens, while accelerating economic growth in the process”.

SkyPower has a long history of working closely with local communities to produce hundreds of millions of kilowatt hours (kWh) of clean electricity every year, while ensuring that those closest to the developments reap the rewards of renewable electrification.

In Zambia, the worldwide Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, signed a MoU with the Industrial Development Corporation of Zambia to explore the development of two 50MW solar PV independent power projects through the Scaling Solar programme.

The solar PV projects will be built in four phases over the next five-years.

The country does not have solar developments matching to the scale of hydropower and geothermal projects, which account for 38% and 25% of supplies respectively.