{"id":8746,"date":"2020-03-24T08:30:43","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T05:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=8746"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:56","slug":"how-kengen-centum-missed-a-piece-of-turkana-wind-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2020\/03\/24\/how-kengen-centum-missed-a-piece-of-turkana-wind-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"How KenGen, Centum Missed A Piece Of Turkana Wind Farm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kenyan\ncompanies shied away from investing in Africa\u2019s largest renewable energy\nproject, Lake Turkana wind power plant, located in northern Kenya, handing\nforeigners 100 percent ownership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Carlo Van Wageningen, the Dutch founder of the 310MW wind farm said that all the local firms they approached declined to invest in construction of the wind farm in exchange for equity stake. That was about a decade ago when the project was still a plan on paper. Today the $700 million (Sh70 billion) plant is generating and injecting clean electricity into the national grid, having been completed late 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe are often asked why ownership is 100 percent foreign. It\u2019s just that the project didn\u2019t excite local firms as much,\u201d said the 63-year old Wageningen, who doubles as a board director of Lake Turkana Wind Power Ltd (<a href=\"https:\/\/ltwp.co.ke\/\">LTWP<\/a>) \u2013 the developers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Flashback. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First\nto be approached some 10 years ago was State-owned KenGen, the largest power\nproducer in East Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\nthen managing director Eddy Njoroge, declined the offer, strongly questioning\nthe viability of the project, according to Wageningen\u2019s account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In\ndismissing the idea, KenGen cited a weak national grid and inefficiencies with\nits Ngong wind farm (25.5MW), which ran on less efficient first generation\nturbines. Turbines powering Turkana wind farm (310MW) are third generation, bigger\nand more advanced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Next,\nthe developers led by Wageningen approached Centum Investments but got the same\nlukewarm response from director and shareholder Chris Kirubi. The next stop was\nat the offices of infrastructure firm Transcentury where the wind man was again\nturned down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meanwhile\nas the green energy campaign gained momentum globally, renewable projects such\nas Turkana wind farm found favour among development financing institutions\n(DFIs) which had no qualms pouring in their money in exchange for shareholding.\nThat explains why Turkana wind farm is 100 percent owned by foreign investors,\nwho also secured funding from a consortium of 11 foreign banks. Local banks\nlacked the financing depth in terms of quantum and tenor required for a project\nof such magnitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\n310MW wind farm constructed at a cost of Sh70 billion has a return on\ninvestment of 14.8 percent per year, according to the developers.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This\ncompares well with returns on investment in other common asset classes like\nland, real estate, stocks and bonds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At\n310MW, Turkana wind farm is enough to power up to one million households with power\nproduction averaging 80 percent (capacity factor), making it among the best\nperforming\/yielding wind plants in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\ninvestors in the plant include UK firm Alydwych \u2013 the largest shareholder with\na 30.7 percent stake.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Second\nlargest equity holder with a 25.25 percent stake is KP&amp;P Africa, comprising\na team of Dutch individual investors including the founding father Wageningen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Others\nare Danish turbines maker Vestas (12.5 percent), Danish Climate Fund\n(Investment Fund for Developing Countries), KLP Norfund Investments AS of\nDenmark and Finnish Fund for Industrial Cooperation Ltd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">American\ntechnology giant Google had expressed interest to buy out Vestas\u2019 shareholding\nat an estimated cost of Sh4 billion but later dropped the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\nwind park, powered by 365 turbines spread out over 40,000 acres of land, lies\nin the Turkana Corridor, a low-level jet stream from the Indian Ocean that\ncreates strong and predictable winds at an average of 11.4 m\/s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The wind speeds are accelerated by the presence of Mt. Kulal to the North and Mt. Nyiru to the South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Read also:<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/kenya-four-million-women-live-below-poverty-line\/\"> Kenya: Four Million Women Live Below Poverty Line<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kenyan companies shied away from investing in Africa\u2019s largest renewable energy project, Lake Turkana wind power plant, located in northern Kenya, handing foreigners 100 percent ownership. Carlo Van Wageningen, the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8747,"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":[89],"tags":[322,896,943,1435,1548],"class_list":["post-8746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economic-responsibility","tag-centum-investments","tag-kengen","tag-lake-turkana-wind-power","tag-transcentury","tag-wind-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8746","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=8746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}