Nema permits Tower Power to build Sh1.8bn electricity plant

Tower Power — a private electricity producer — will break ground next month for the country’s first commercial biomass power plant.

The station will be fed by the Prosopis Juliflora tree popularly known as “Mathenge” as the country moves towards adopting green and renewable energy solutions.

The projects are set to transform the tree from a noxious weed to a cash crop when about 2,000 households begin supplying the firm with the tree stems.

“Prosopis Juliflora produces good quality fuel of one of the highest recorded calorific value, about 5000kcal/kg, which burns well even when freshly cut,” said Damaris Akoth, an agronomist at Tower Power. The firm intends to put up a 11.5 megawatts biofuel plant in Marigat, Baringo County at a cost of Sh1.8 billion. The project has been sanctioned by the National Environment Management Authority.

The company also intends to build another biomass plant at Kinango, Kwale County at a cost of Sh2.1 billion. The biofuel plants will also be fed by agricultural residue such as wheat and sisal waste and earn carbon credits – with estimated carbon emission savings of 52,300 tonnes annually.

Baringo has a Mathenge forest cover of about 30,000 hectares, the highest density of the invasive plant in Kenya. Tower Power estimates that the forest can serve its power plant for 10 years and is negotiating with Kenya Power the terms of a 20-year power purchase agreement.

A survey carried out in 2007 showed that the tree had invaded 15 districts and occupied 200,000 hectares.

Tower Power is owned by Industrial Energy Africa Limited, a joint venture between industrialist Manu Chandaria’s Comcraft Group and Powergas International, a UK-based energy conglomerate.

Tower Power targets to raise 70 per cent — Sh2.7 billion — of the funding for the two projects from local financiers with the balance being injected by Powergas International.

“The tree stem will be cut into chips and dried then reacted at high temperatures under controlled oxygen to avoid complete combustion. The resulting gas will be used to run specialised generators, which in turn produce electricity,” Tower Power said in a statement last week on Thursday.

The unit price of producing electricity from biomass is 8 US cents per kilowatt hour which presently designated as the feed in tariff for retail power sales, meaning Tower Power will seek better terms to realise a return on investment.

Biomass ranks second as the cheapest source of energy after geothermal power, which costs 6.4 US cents; and beats hydro and thermal, which cost 12.5 US cents and 10.2 US cents respectively.

The power produced at the Kwale biomass plant will be used to meet the energy needs of Mabati Rolling Mills and Kaluworks Limited, both of them subsidiaries of the Comcraft Group. The firm plans to grow mathenge on a Trust land in Kinango.

Comcraft joins a growing list of firms resorting to produce their own electricity to cut on escalating power costs. Prosopis Juliflora was first introduced in Kenya in 1973 from Brazil for the rehabilitation of quarries in Mombasa by Bamburi Cement.

It was later introduced in Baringo, Tana and Pokot areas to curb desertification and fuel wood shortages.

It was later found to colonise large areas of land, its sap poisonous to people and its sturdy roots a hindrance to mechanised farming.