Kenya has been ranked in its highest ever position in the newly released 2019 Climatescope Index released by the Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF2019).
The report by BNEF indicated that the country had covered huge ground in its race to achieve green energy sufficiency after it invested close to Ksh140 billion in 2018.
At number five, the ranking is the highest Kenya has ever obtained, beating developed countries like Russia, which only made it to number 66, while Argentina was ranked seventh.
President Kenyatta, speaking in November 2018, during a roundtable discussion on 'don't drop climate efforts' session of the Paris Peace Forum in France, had stated that Kenya was seeking to attain a 100% transition to green energy by 2020.
"Our target is to attain 100 percent green energy sufficiency by 2020. We will do this while we achieve 100% access to power for our population, and sharply lower costs to industry to aid our manufacturing push,” he had stated.
As of December 4, 2018, the President announced that the government had added 364 Megawatts (MW) to the national grid, which included 310 MW from Lake Turkana wind farm, and 54 MW from Garissa solar plant, accounting for 65 percent of the energy consumption in the country.
President Kenyatta was speaking when he presided over the ground-breaking ceremony for the 83.3 MW unit 6 of Olkaria 1 Geothermal Power Plant in Naivasha, Nakuru County.
The only other African country that made it to the top ten by BNEF was Morocco, which ranked tenth, while India, Chile, Brazil and China made it to the top four respectively.
Climatescope is a unique country-by-country assessment, interactive report, and index that evaluates the progress made by emerging markets in their energy transition.
Climatescope is supported by the UK Department for International Development in partnership with Bloomberg New Energy Finance since 2014.
