Kenya spends over $500 million annually on kerosene for lighting alone which represents a big portion of the country’s earnings, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) disclosed on Thursday in Nairobi.
According to the UN agency, most of the money is from the rural households, who are not able to access electricity.
“With about 6 million households dependent on kerosene and each house owning an average of 3 kerosene lanterns, Kenya has a big market potential for clean energy lighting, particularly for off grid households,” said in Nairobi, Eshila Hazel Maravanyika spokesperson of United Nations Information Centre.
According to UNIDO, to replace Kerosene lighting with energy efficient Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps powered by rechargeable batteries, Kenya needs a minimum of 20 million LED lanterns.
UNIDO disclosed that a pilot program called “Lighting up Kenya” has been developed under its Energy thematic area.
The goals of the program is to provide renewable energy to off grid households, either through generating electricity using clean technologies which are zero carbon or carbon neutral, such as wind, solar, biomass gasification, bio-gas and straight vegetable oil.
The program which started in 2008 has developed 11 centers using hybrid renewable energy technologies.
Other than energy production, “Lighting up Kenya” is promoting the use of renewable energy for off grid household lighting using LED lamps.
Spokesperson Marayanyika announced that Kenya will celebrate Africa Industrialization Day with the Ministry of Industrialization and UNIDO on 19 and 20 November.
Source African Press Agency
African News from NetNewsPublisher.com
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