Dodgy deal: Lamu coal power plant, Kenya
(https://www.banktrack.org/project/lamu_coal_power_project)
The Lamu coal power plant was going to the first coal-fired power plant in Kenya, and in East Africa. The project received a go ahead from the Kenyan government in 2014. It is expected to cost USD 2 billion and was initially planned to be operational in 2020. The coal for the plant will be sourced from South Africa, Mozambique, and Kenya.
This project shows how profit making motives still trumps over care and concern for the environment and planetary limits. Amu power, the implementing agency for the Lamu coal power plant project, hopes that by onboarding General Electric (GE) on to the project it will create the perception and make the case that the energy produced from the coal power plant will be efficient and generate less CO2. It plans to use these arguments to gain the buy in of community and environmental stakeholders. However, getting to zero emissions is the first goal, not generating less greenhouse gases, if global warming is to be halted and reversed. The cumulative effects of multiple coal plants operating based on this same premise, would only ensure that this goal is farther out of sight.
After a lot of community and civil society advocacy against the Lamu coal power plant and evidence of the negative impacts of the project on flora, fauna, and human life by the academic community and policy think tanks, on July 26, 2019, Kenya’s National Environmental tribunal ruled that the environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) license for the Lamu coal fired power plant in Kenya was insufficient and that the construction had to be stopped.
References
Lamu coal power plant, Kenya https://www.banktrack.org/project/lamu_coal_power_project#_
Christoph Wang. October, 2019. Kenya’s Lamu Coal Fired Power Plant — Lessons learnt for Green Development and Investments in the BRI https://green-bri.org/kenyas-lamu-coal-fired-power-plant-lessons-learnt-for-green-development-and-investments-in-the-bri
Annastacia Kuria. August, 2020. Lamu Coal Plant: A Bad Energy Source for Kenya https://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/blogs/11885/lamu-coal-plant-a-bad-energy-source-for-kenya/