ERC<\/a>) would spend Sh100 (one dollar) in fuel expenses for a round trip between the lakeside city of Kisumu and the capital Nairobi. ERC last year rebranded to Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) following the enactment of the Energy Act 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJabbal, a retired electrical engineer with a signature turban\nhead cloth popular with the Sikh Indian community, reflects on the heady days\nin his service to Kenya\u2019s energy sector. He admits the energy landscape has\nradically shifted over the years. During his time, households had to be\nconnected to the national grid to have electricity unlike nowadays even\noff-grid homes can still access power through solar solutions \u2013 a relatively\nnew field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jabbal says his professional journey started in 1958, soon\nafter he graduated from university in India where he had gone for schooling and\nflew back to Nairobi seeking employment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fresh and highly ambitious, the first stop for the then young\nman was naturally Kenya Power given his background in electrical engineering.\nBack then, Kenya Power covered the entire chain from power generation,\ntransmission to distribution\/retail. The octogenarian recalls, with a sense of\nnostalgia, the utility firm was largely managed by Whites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He wasn\u2019t successful the first time in his job hunt and was\nturned down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The turndown didn\u2019t, however, dim his lights and the young\nman soon convinced his grandfather to work at his printing press in Nairobi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s from the savings he made from the family job that he\nbought his first car at Sh4,000 \u2013 a price that is now hardly enough to buy a\nnew car tyre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1961, three years after graduation and aged 26 years, he\nwas back knocking on the door of Kenya Power, bright-eyed and bushytailed. This\ntime he landed a deal as a junior engineer, effectively opening up his path in\nthe country\u2019s energy landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then in 1966, he applied for commonwealth scholarship and got\naccepted to study masters in Power Systems at the University of Manchester for\ntwo years in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With a tinge of nostalgia in his voice, he recalls Kenya\nPower back then had a company car scheme in which employees would be given\ncompany cars (Toyota Corona), plus mileage allowance. And after four years,\nemployees could buy the car at half its price if they so wished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1971, soon after returning back to Kenya from the UK\nstudy, he was promoted to the office of assistant chief engineer in charge of\nplanning at Kenya Power. It\u2019s a position he served in diligently. Seven years\nlater, he represented Kenya in a three-month fellowship programme in Washington\nDC where he sharpened his skills in Finance and Economics aspects of the energy\nsector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then in 1987, aged 50 years, he retired only to be offered a\ncommonwealth power engineer job two months later in the Caribbean nation of\nDominica. Here, he worked for four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soon after, the father of three adult children landed a\nconsultancy job for the World Bank where he was part of the team that unbundled\nKenya Power\u2019s role, hiving off power production role and assigning it to\nKenGen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally in 2008, based on his vast experience, former\nPresident Mwai Kibaki appointed Jabbal as the board chairman of the then Energy\nRegulatory Commission (ERC), a role he played until 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jabbal, who has written extensively in the dailies on power\nsector, was recently feted in the Sikh Awards, for his outstanding work and\ncontribution to Kenya\u2019s energy sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019s a known tough critic of government policies with regard\nto energy planning and projects implementation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The octogenarian recalls of the early 1970s when Kenya was\nalmost completely reliant on hydropower imports from neighboring Uganda that\nwas then under the rule of the late dictator Idi Amin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At some point, he recollects, Idi Amin resorted to economic\nsabotage after an altercation, switching off power supply to Kenya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe were thrown into darkness,\u201d he smiles, noting that it\nforced Kenyan officials to explore other alternatives. Though Kenya was also\nproducing hydropower, it wasn\u2019t enough to meet the needs of the economy at the\ntime, thus the imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was a turning point,\u201d he quips, emphasising the point\nwith his characteristic head nod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn\u2019t until 1981, that Kenya constructed its first\ngeothermal power plant, the Olkaria 1, helping the country to diversify its\nsources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Kenya still imports hydropower from Uganda to serve the\nwestern part of the country, it has completely reduced its exposure by\ndiversifying its energy mix to include wind, thermal, hydropower, solar and\ngeothermal. Geothermal now accounts for about half of the country\u2019s generation\nmix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an interesting twist, Jabbal reveals he believes not in\nGod or any other Supreme Being but in energy whose empirical qualities he\nequates to those of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the old man, God and energy is one and the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how does energy qualify to be a god? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For starters, he cites the First Law of Thermodynamics which\nstates that energy cannot be created nor destroyed; but can only be transformed\nfrom one form to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGod, as you people believe, is yet the only other thing that\ncannot be created nor destroyed, but can take all forms,\u201d he says then pauses\nfor the correlation to marinate and become clear in this writer\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a short while, he proceeds to run further parallels\nbetween energy\u2019s qualities and God\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGod is infinite, God is invisible and God is immanent. So is\nenergy,\u201d the bespectacled old man quips with finality, emphasising his point\nwith a head nod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for now Jabbal\u2019s next task is to write a book capturing his journey in Kenya\u2019s energy sector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read also: <\/strong>A Peek Into Kenya\u2019s New Steam Power Plant<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hindpal Jabbal bought his first car, a Volkswagen 504, at a cost of four thousand shillings ($40) in 1960, three years before Kenya claimed independence from colonial rule. Back then,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[559,581,896,940,1011,1029,1111],"class_list":["post-8595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-responsibility","tag-energy","tag-epra","tag-kengen","tag-kplc","tag-ministry-of-energy","tag-mwai-kibaki","tag-petrol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}