President William Ruto announced a new plan to address Nairobi's power outages and rationing in Nairobi by generating energy from garbage.
Speaking during a groundbreaking ceremony for 6,704 Affordable Housing units in Starehe on Monday, March 6, the Head of State revealed that the government had procured materials to actualise the project.
Garbage collected from different Nairobi households would be assembled at one specific place and converted into an electric-producing site.
The trash will then be recycled to generate electricity and transmitted to power different homesteads.
Ruto added that his administration will work with the county government to actualise the ambitious project.
"It is a project I am committed to, the national government will support the county government of Nairobi to realise the project even as we work with other counties across Kenya," he stated.
Dandora Dumpsite is one of the garbage collection centres highlighted in the electricity production plan.
In other countries such as Ethiopia and US, unprocessed waste is burned in a large incinerator with a boiler and a generator to produce electricity.
India also uses the same technology to generate electricity where the gases produced are treated to prevent air pollution.
The resultant ash from the incineration of solid waste is used as construction material after necessary processing.
Frequent Power Blackouts
The project is expected to address frequent power outages and rationing in Nairobi, occasioned by low water levels in the dams.
It was also touted to aid the government to lower the cost of electricity by shifting from over-reliance on water to generate power.
Ruto's announcement came days after the country suffered a nationwide power blackout caused by a system failure.
However, Kenya Power deployed technicians who restored power in most parts of the country.
