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Kenya embarks on race to zero carbon emissions

Kenya is vulnerable to climate change with projections suggesting temperature will rise up to 2.5ºC by 2050.

Cabinet Secretary of Petroleum and Mining John Munyes (left) and Enrico Tavolini, Managing Director of Eni Kenya signed an MOU to promote the decarbonization process to tackle climate change on Thursday, July 22. (COURTESY: Petro_MiningKE)

Ministry of Petroleum and Mining and Eni, an Italian energy company have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote decarbonization.

The process aims to tackle climate change through new industrial models of fully-integrated circular economy along the whole bio-fuel production value chain.

The parties will jointly conduct feasibility studies to develop waste and residue collection as well as agricultural projects.

The purpose is to establish a wide range of feedstock sources that do not compete with food cycles, to be transformed into bio-fuels and bio-products that might contribute to feed Eni’s bio-refineries in Gela and Venice, Italy.

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The parties will also assess the opportunity of converting Mombasa refinery into a bio-refinery, as well as the construction of a new plant for second-generation bio-ethanol from waste biomass, leveraging on Eni technology, Ecofining Process.

The agricultural development project focuses on the development of sustainable oil crop cultivations namely, low ILUC (Indirect Land Use Change) feedstock.

ILUC crops include cover crops, castor in degraded lands, croton trees in agro-forestry systems and other agro-industrial co-products.

The waste and residue collection would be focused to promote and implement a collection system for used cooked oil (UCO) and of other agro-processing residues.

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This initiative will contribute to diversifying Kenya’s energy mix and supporting the overall decarbonization process, while also decreasing the country’s dependence from imports of petroleum products.

Other expected benefits include developing sustainable agricultural activities and circular economy, producing power from renewable sources, fostering the economic competitiveness of the local industry and creating new jobs.

In Kenya, the government is keen to set up an emissions trading system that will allow companies and other bodies to buy emissions allowances.

In April, President Uhuru Kenyatta said the government is committed to lowering the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 32 per cent by the year 2030, and termed climate change as a development and security threat that must be addressed urgently.

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Emissions trading is a pollution control mechanism where a central authority issues a limited number of permits for the release of specific greenhouse gases, with companies being able to buy and trade permits.

Countries use a price on carbon to meet climate goals in the form of a tax or under an emissions trading or cap-and-trade plan, where carbon limits are set.

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