Business Green has a post on efforts to build geothermal heat and power plants in Britain - E.ON heats up plans for five deep-geothermal power plants. The FT also has a look at geothermal power - in their case looking at Kenya - Geothermal: Kenya pins its hopes on steam power.

The UK's nascent geothermal energy industry has today received a major boost after it emerged that one of the UK's largest energy companies is working on plans to develop five new deep geothermal heat and distribution systems.

Ireland-based geothermal technology specialist GT Energy today revealed that it has inked a memorandum of understanding with energy giant E.ON that will see the two companies jointly develop a range of urban geothermal heat power plants.

The UK currently boasts only a handful of deep geothermal power plants, including a pioneering district heat system in Southampton that has been in place since 1986. However, a number of projects are currently under construction, including plans for a new geothermal power plant in Cornwall and a geothermal heat facility in the centre of Newcastle.

E.ON and GT Energy maintain that scientific studies have shown the UK has access to up to 100GW of geothermal energy potential, particularly in the South-West, North-West, and North-East.

They have also argued that deep-geothermal technology is well suited to urban settings where the resulting heat can be easily distributed to a variety of buildings in the area.

Reuters has a report on the expansion of geothermal power generation in Kenya - Kenya to start work on new geothermal plant.

Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) said on Tuesday it will sign a contract next week with a consortium to build its 280 megawatt (MW) Olkaria IV geothermal plant meant to be operational in 2014, as it pushes to diversify its power sources.

At the same time, KenGen Managing director Eddy Njoroge said an extra 202 MW would be injected into the national grid next year from a mix of thermal power, renewable energy and rehabilitation of an existing hydropower dam. The total cost of Olkaria IV -- an extension of Olkaria I and II plants that already produce a total 115 MW -- is $1 billion, he added.

Treehugger has a post on the use of biogas in Kenya - Source of Sanitation Crisis Becomes Sustainable Power Solution in Africa's Largest Slum. After Gutenberg has more.

In the impoverished Nairobi neighborhood of Kibera, often called "Africa's biggest slum," the lack of toilets and sewer systems leaves hundreds of thousands of people vulnerable to the diseases that thrive amid poor sanitation. But an innovative program is helping turn one of the area's biggest health problems into a solution to one of the community's most crucial economic -- and environmental -- concerns.

Poor households in Kibera are struggling to meet rising costs for kerosene, paraffin, charcoal, firewood, and other fuel sources, many of which also contribute to indoor air pollution and the myriad ailments that go along with it, IPS News reports.

At the Katwekera Tosha Bio Centre set up with the help of the Umande Trust, however, Kibera residents can safely and cheaply cook food using biogas generated from the center's toilets:

The centre has toilets and bathrooms on the ground floor -- the toilets are connected to a bio-digester, with a dome-shaped holding tank in which biogas is produced. Raw human waste from the toilets flows in, and bacteria break it down, releasing methane gas which collects at the top of the domed tank.

"A pipe is then plumbed into these toilets and connected to the first floor, which is where the cooking area is located," says [center manager David] Kihara. The gas is piped to collective stoves one floor up -- and is usually sufficient for community members to cook on throughout the day.

The idea may sound a bit icky, but it's perfectly safe, helping solve sanitation problems while providing green energy at the same time. Though residents only pay a small fee to use the cooking facilities, the center has become so popular it's even turning a profit -- money that benefits locals who have registered with the community-based organization, IPS writes.

BusinessWeek has a report on Kenya's plans for exploiting geothermal power - Kenya Aims to Make Geothermal Energy Main Power Source By 2014.

Kenya, Africa’s largest producer of geothermal power, is aiming for the energy supply to surpass hydro as the top contributor to the country’s electricity grid by 2014, said Silas Simiyu, chief executive officer of the state-owned Geothermal Development Co.

A 10-year, $2.6 billion exploration plan will involve sinking 566 wells in the Great Rift Valley, where shifting tectonic plates provide a key source of the energy, the company said in a statement yesterday. GDC is expected to begin drilling in Menengai in central Kenya this week, with an initial aim to find sufficient reserves to feed a 400-megawatt facility by 2014, Simiyu told reporters yesterday.

Over the next decade, the company aims to discover 2,336 megawatts of steam produced by hot underground rocks that boil water. The vapors are used to power turbines. Geothermal energy currently accounts for 12 percent of Kenya’s 1,405 megawatts of generation, including an installed capacity of 212 megawatts at a plant at Olkaria, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) outside of Nairobi, the capital.

“We should not see a situation of power shortages like we had before,” Simiyu said.

Drought in Kenya two years ago depleted water levels at hydropower dams, which supplies 55 percent of the country’s electricity. The resulting power rationing between August and October 2009 hindered growth in East Africa’s largest economy.

Kenya estimates the extent of its unexploited resources ranges between 7,000 megawatts and 10,000 megawatts at 14 “high- potential” locations valued at $30 billion, according to the statement.

Bloomberg has a report on the latest geothermal power plant in Kenya - Kenya Starts Generation at New 35-Megawatt Geothermal Plant.

Kenya Electricity Generating Co., the country’s largest power producer, started producing power today at a 35-megawatt geothermal power plant.

KenGen, as the state-owned company is known, will add a further 350 megawatts of geothermal capacity by 2013, Managing Director Eddy Njoroge said in an e-mailed statement.

“Our increased investment in geothermal power production is also in line with KenGen’s business strategy of reducing reliance on hydro power which is dependent on weather patterns, and to pursue green energy sources which are safe to the environment,” Njoroge said.

The new plant at Olkaria, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of Nairobi, was co-financed by the European Investment Bank, which provided $40.8 million, the International Development Association and the French Development Agency.

The three financiers have already pledged to provide funding for construction of another 280-megawatt power project in Olkaria.

Time has an article on the (long rumoured) presence of substantial amounts of oil in East Africa - Is East Africa the Next Frontier for Oil?.

According to local lore, Portuguese travelers as far back as the late 19th century suspected that oil might lie beneath parts of East Africa after noticing a thick, greasy sediment wash up on the shores of Mozambique. More interested in finding cheap labor, though, the explorers had little use for oil.

A century later, it turns out that the Portuguese were right. Seismic tests over the past 50 years have shown that countries up the coast of East Africa have natural gas in abundance. Early data compiled by industry consultants also suggest the presence of massive offshore oil deposits. Those finds have spurred oil explorers to start dropping more wells in East Africa, a region they say is an oil and gas bonanza just waiting to be tapped, one of the last great frontiers in the hunt for hydrocarbons. "I and a lot of other people in oil companies working in East Africa have long been convinced that it's the last real high-potential area in the world that hasn't been fully explored," says Richard Schmitt, chief executive of Black Marlin Energy, a Dubai-based East Africa oil prospector. "It seems, for a variety of geopolitical reasons, that more than anything else, it's been neglected over the last several decades. Most of those barriers are currently being lowered or [have] disappeared altogether."

Few have wanted to pay the cost of searching for oil or gas in the region, or risk drilling wells in volatile countries such as Uganda, Mozambique or Somalia. But better technology, lower risk in some of the countries and higher oil prices in recent years have changed the equation. Wildcatters and majors such as Italy's Eni, Petronas of Malaysia and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) have all moved on East Africa in the past few years.

They're hoping to mimic London-based Tullow Oil, which discovered some 2 billion bbl. of oil in landlocked Uganda over the past four years. Last month, Texas-based oil company Anadarko Petroleum Corp. announced that it had tapped a giant reservoir of natural gas off the coast of Mozambique. "Anadarko's find went off like a bomb here in Houston," says Robert Bertagne, a Texas-based oil wildcatter. "It was, 'Wow, we are finding large quantities of gas, and that means we have hydrocarbons in the area.' Once you have a discovery, more people are going to go in there." (See pictures of oil fires.)

Much of East Africa's hopes are focused on a fault line running from Somalia to Madagascar known as the Davie Fracture Zone. It's there that Bertagne's analysis — using Cold War–era sea-floor mapping originally intended for use by Soviet submarines — has prompted speculation about oil deposits rivaling those of the North Sea or Middle East. There's still a lot that's unknown: North Africa has seen 20,000 wells sunk over the past few decades, while drillers have sunk 14,000 wells in and off West Africa. In East Africa, the total is about 500 wells.

BusinessWeek reports on a new geothermal power project in Kenya - Kenya Electricity Signs $1.3 Billion Geothermal Deal.

Kenya Electricity Generating Co., the East African nation’s biggest power producer, signed a contract worth more than $1.3 billion for Sinclair Knight Merz Pty Ltd. to be consultants for the construction of facilities to provide 280 megawatts of geothermal power from underground hot springs.

Work will begin this month and take three years, Ken Gen Managing Director Edward Njoroge said in an e-mailed statement today. The geothermal power project, which will be Kenya’s biggest, comprises two fields in Olkaria near the town of Naivasha, he said.

“The scope of the project includes four 70-megawatt power generating machines, steam-gathering systems, substations, transmission lines and other infrastructure,” Njoroge said

The ABC has an update on Panax Geothermal's progress in South Australia - Geothermal well 25 per cent finished.

The company drilling a geothermal well near Penola, in South Australia's south-east, says it is more than a quarter of the way through the project.

Panax Geothermal has a massive rig set up at a site near Penola and has already drilled more than a kilometre. It says if it is successful it will be Australia's first geothermal site to access hot water in an aquifer to create energy.

The company's managing director, Bertus de Graaf, says two months has been set aside for the drilling program. "We're targeting a maximum depth of 4,000 metres," he said.

Reuters has an article on yet another renewable energy project proposed for Kenya - Kenyans plan a 300 MW wind and solar power project.I'm not sure how many of these developments are actually getting built, but interest seems high at least.

A group of Kenyan investors want to start a 300 megawatts wind and solar power project in the north of the country next year, the head of their enterprise said on Thursday.

East Africa's biggest economy is seeking to increase electricity generation from alternative sources like wind and solar to meet demand that is expected to rise to 9,000 MW by 2030 from this year's 1,050 MW.

"The choice of the project was informed by blackouts, low penetration rate of electricity and instability of the power that we have. We are trying to secure land for the whole project," Michael Nderitu told Reuters.

Bloomberg has a report on efforts to expand geothermal energy output in East Africa - Kenya to Boost Geothermal Output by 4,000MW in Two Decades.

Kenya plans to boost geothermal generation capacity by 4,000 megawatts over the next two decades to ensure East Africa’s biggest economy has clean and reliable energy supplies, the Geothermal Development Co. said.

Three production sites at the Olkaria geothermal field, 60 kilometers (37 miles) northwest of Nairobi, can now produce a combined 167 megawatts, against a national potential of 7,000 megawatts, said Silas Simiyu, chief executive officer of the state-run company that was set up in February.

“There is a political push in Kenya to produce electricity that is more affordable, reliable and from green energy,” Simiyu said in an interview in Nairobi, the capital, yesterday.

ENN has a report on a new wind farm planned for Kenya that would provide up to 20% of the nation's power supply -Kenya firm plans 300 MW wind farm by 2012.

A Kenyan firm plans to produce 300 MW of electricity by 2012 by harnessing renewable wind power in the north of the country, its director told Reuters.

Turkana Wind Power has been studying the viability of wind power projects in the barren, inhospitable region for the last four years, Chris Staubo said. "Full production will be in June 2012 but we should start production in June 2011," he told Reuters late on Thursday.

Once completed, the project could meet about a quarter of Kenya's total energy demand, which stands at some 1,200 MW, just slightly below the installed capacity.

The government is looking at developing "green" energy sources, such as wind and geothermal, to meet demand that is growing at around 8 percent a year.

Staubo said the total project cost would be about $760 million and that the African Development Bank (AfDB) had indicated it would finance 30 percent of that.

The Jakarta Post has a report on efforts to expand geothermal power production in Indonesia - Geothermal projects need investors.

The government is to auction off geothermal resources in Ngebel, Ponorogo, and Ijen, Banyuwangi, to help defuse the power crisis in Java and Bali, an official says. The total capacity of the two sites is more than 400 Megawatts (MW). ...

Head of the provincial energy and mineral resources agency, Tutut Herawati, said the government was preparing a joint team from the central government, provincial and regency administrations to open a tender for the two geothermal projects.

The geothermal resource in the Blawan-Ijen area, recently declared a mining site, is located on the border of Banyuwangi and Bondowoso and has a capacity of 185 MW. The resource in the Ngebel-Wilis area, on the border of Ponorogo and Madiun, has a capacity of 120 MW and is under regulation in a bylaw issued by the provincial government last month. ...

Tutut said the province had a further nine geothermal deposits that would be offered to investors in the future. The nine, located in Madiun, Mojokerto, Probolinggo, Pacitan, Malang and Sumenep, have a combined potential capacity of 580 MW.

Separately, the director general for coal and geothermal minerals at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, Bambang Setiawan, said the government would continue mining the renewable and environmentally friendly geothermal energy to help defuse the decade-long national power shortage. "The government will not impose taxes on the imports of any materials for geothermal exploration as incentives for investors to produce the energy," he said.

He said Indonesia had 40 percent of the world's geothermal potentials, which could produce a total of 27,510 MW, equivalent to 219 billion barrels of crude oil.

Reuters reports that Ormat has expanded a geothermal power plant in Kenya - Ormat Tech completes geothermal plant in Kenya.

Ormat Industries said on Thursday its subsidiary Ormat Technologies had completed phase two of construction of a geothermal plant in Kenya.

The Olkaria III plant will add 35 MW of base load capacity to the existing 13 MW plant which has been in operation since 2001, Ormat Industries said in a statement to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Ormat said the expanded power plant will save 120,000 tons of imported oil, mitigate carbon dioxide emissions and reduce the average production cost of electricity in Kenya while reducing its dependence on imports.

The Geelong Star report that local company GreenEarth Energy is coming up with some big claims about the potential for local geothermal power production - Geothermal energy bid city sitting on powerful stuff.

Hot water flowing under the Geelong region had potential to supply 150 times Victoria’s energy requirements, a company announced yesterday. Greenearth Energy said the city was set to become “Victoria’s first renewable energy hub” after new tests confirmed the region as a potential target for geothermal power.

Greenearth Energy wants to drill near Moriac and the new Armstrong Creek growth area for “wet hot rocks” to generate renewable, green energy.

Managing director Mark Miller said early tests had found “significant potential” to produce 150 times Victoria’s energy requirements and more than Australia uses in a year.

“We’ve identified the potential for hot sedimentary aquifers that contain water at depth (which is) super-heated and can be drilled into,” Mr Miller said. “The water is extracted through a binary geothermal power plant that produces geothermal energy. The water is then returned to the aquifer so it’s not depleted. “The potential of the system could literally deliver hundreds of megawatts of power. “This is significant. It has potential for not only Geelong’s and the new Armstrong Creek area’s requirements but the entire state’s.”

Lastly, Time Magazine has a look at the renewal of the importance of geothermal power to Iceland's economy - Energy: Boiling Point.

On a chilly morning outside the hamlet of Reykjahlid in northern Iceland, Hallgrimur Jonasson lifts the edge of a soggy plank of wood lying in the clay to expose a small hole in the ground. "This is the rye-bread bakery," he says, yanking his hand back from a waft of scalding, sulfurous steam. A chef in a nearby hotel, Jonasson estimates his kitchen staff bake roughly three tons of the sweet, dense rye bread in the hole every summer to meet the growing demand, mostly from tourists, for the exotic carb. The bread's price tag — up nearly 20% from last year — has led to some clucking from villagers that the young entrepreneur is cashing in on a local tradition. Jonasson is more pragmatic. "Who are we kidding?" he asks. "This is our living here."

Steam has long powered Icelandic dreams. Pockets of underground water heated by the earth's core may not be particularly glamorous, but tiny Iceland has spent decades figuring out useful ways to harness its heat and power, employing it for everything from baking bread to turning turbines. Geothermal power now provides cheap, clean heat to more than 90% of Icelandic homes, and generates 30% of the nation's electricity, a slice worth roughly $120 million. In recent years, as Icelanders became smitten with the idea that their ambitious banks could create a global financial center in the far north Atlantic, geothermal power got pushed out of the spotlight. But now, with the krona down 44% against the dollar compared to a year ago and most of Iceland's banks close to bankruptcy, this nation of 313,000 is taking another look at the incredible resource boiling away underfoot.

It helps that global investment in renewable energy was up 60% last year. The number of projects using geothermal power has lagged behind wind, solar and biofuels for many years. However, since 2004, projects in the U.S. have doubled, and countries such as Indonesia have set ambitious goals for geothermal generation. The financial crisis has hit the renewables sector, to be sure, but analysts say that thanks to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's green-energy agenda, and recent G-8 goals to cut carbon emissions by 50% by 2050, the industry will come back strong. "I have people calling me asking, 'Where should I put my money? Who do I invest in?' " says Mark Taylor, a geothermal analyst with renewable-energy-research firm New Energy Finance. "I'm still pretty optimistic about everything."

So is Iceland. Though they expect credit-crunch delays, the nation's domestic power firms are sticking with plans to nearly treble the geothermal power Iceland produces in a bid to woo companies like aluminum giant Alcoa and tech heavyweight Google. Internationally, a new crop of Icelandic investment firms have started pumping money into projects, offering partners from Djibouti to the Philippines capital, skills and — perhaps most importantly — a sense that this also-ran of renewable energy is really viable. "I think [geothermal power] is the paramount moral obligation of Iceland in the modern world," President Olafur Grimsson told TIME. "There are over 100 countries that could do the same thing we have with their resources. This is the area in which we can really contribute."

Ten minutes up the road from Jonasson's bread ovens, over some low hills, a series of dense white steam plumes rise into the cloudy sky. In a flannel shirt and hard hat, Birkir Fanndal maneuvers his truck over one of the dirt roads that crisscross Iceland's first major geothermal power station, Krafla. Soon after the inaugural borehole was drilled here 34 years ago, the first in a series of volcanic eruptions rocked the area. The eruptions, nine in all, went on for nearly a decade, sending engineers scrambling to keep up with the shifting earth. Fanndal, the plant's manager, stops his truck in front of a crater where, without warning, one early drill hole imploded into a cauldron of boiling water that took half a year to settle down. "There were a lot of people who said we should leave this place," Fanndal recalls.

They didn't, and their tenacity is paying off. Krafla recently became the site of a pilot project to drill extremely deep boreholes (classified as three miles or more), a frontier technology that could yield five to 10 times more energy per borehole than any similar project in the world. Landsvirkjun, the state utility that owns Krafla, has also been in talks to supply power to an aluminum smelter that Alcoa plans to build nearby. The financial downturn has put that project on hold for now, but Alcoa, which already has one smelter in Iceland, still sees the country as a site for cheap, power-intensive smelters. By going geothermal, which has less impact on the environment, Alcoa believes it can mitigate the hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide a smelter emits every year. "If you compare the offset, it's six to eight times cleaner to produce here" than in a location where a smelter would get electricity from a coal- or oil-based source, says Tomas Mar Sigurdsson, general manager of Alcoa Iceland.

Iceland knows a bit about kicking the fossil-fuel habit. At the turn of the last century, life on the isolated island was bleak. It had been among the poorest nations in Europe for centuries, and a smoky haze choked Reykjavik, thanks to the coal inhabitants burned during the interminable winters. In the 1930s, Icelandic engineers successfully diverted underground water to heat an elementary school, and the rest of the capital slowly followed suit. When the global oil crisis hit in the 1970s, efforts to turn this local resource into electricity — by drilling holes into underground heat pockets and reservoirs to release pressurized steam that then runs turbines — moved into high gear. Today, if it's not raining or snowing (or both), views from Reykjavik's harbor are relatively clear. Icelanders hope steam can pull them through tough times again. "The Icelandic power industry will be one of the pillars to carry us out of this crisis," says Asgeir Margeirsson, CEO of Geysir Green Energy. As Thorunn Sveinbjarnardottir, Iceland's Environment Minister, puts it: "Icelanders think about this resource in almost biblical terms."

Kenya's "Daily Nation" is wondering if geothermal power is the cause of the decline of the country's lakes - Could this be true?.

Eddy Mwasi believes there is a direct link between the drying up of Lake Naivasha, Lake Nakuru and Lake Elmentaita and the thriving Ol Karia geothermal plant. Says he: “What is the source of the steam that drives the geothermal plant other than the waters of the three lakes? The rate at which these lakes are drying up corresponds to the growth of Ol Karia. But the source of the steam water is not limitless. As the lakes dry up, the plant is also threatened?

I would be alarmed if this is the primary cause of the decline in water levels (given my fondness for this energy source), so lets take a look at what is happening in Kenya.

The BBC described the potential for geothermal power in Kenya a few years ago - Kenya looks underground for power.

Experts from the United Nations say if this geothermal energy were harnessed, it could provide power to some of the world's poorest nations. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Uganda, and even Zambia have the potential to tap in. But so far, Kenya is the only nation which has made headway. ...

The Ol Karia station is the continent's biggest geothermal power-generating plant. It takes its name from a nearby volcano, which erupted 150 years ago and is still active. There are 22 wells across the site, piercing the Earth's crust, and tapping into rock as hot as 345C deep below the surface.

Silas Simiyu, Ol Karia's development director, says: "Since geo-thermal is an indigenous energy source, we should start with what is ours - not with importing these petroleum products." But even Kenya has been slow to exploit this energy source. The Philippines started geothermal work in the early 1980s - the same time as Kenya - but now generates 20 times more power.

Mr Simiyu attributes the sluggish development to bad policies and bad politics. In the past, hydroelectric dams - the main source of the country's electricity - have been much more appealing to Kenya's rulers. Grand projects, built in a politician's constituency, help generate employment and shore up electoral support.

According to Mr Simiyu, the crunch came during the big drought of 2001. Kenya was plunged into darkness for hours every day as the dams dried up. The power generated by geothermal means saved the country.

In 2002, a second power plant at Ol Karia started work. By 2010, a third should have been completed. This is part of an upsurge of interest in geothermal power across the region. In Uganda, the government is looking into "mini-geothermals", power plants which would generate enough electricity to light up remote villages. ...

The potential for Kenya's businesses can be seen at Oserian flower farm, close to Lake Naivasha. The company says it has the first geo-thermally heated greenhouses in the world. Engineering director Bruce Knight, reckons that the product - long-stemmed roses, destined for Europe - has already improved as the company can now afford to heat its greenhouses through the night.

The company was lucky because it had two existing wells on its land, drilled by the national power company, Kengen. Kengen abandoned the wells, believing they lacked potential. But after investigation, Oserian decided the wells might provide enough energy to power a flower farm.

They bought a ready-to-assemble geothermal plant from Israel - estimating that the million-dollar costs would repay in four to six years. The flower farm is now almost entirely dependent on geothermal energy, which is cheaper and more reliable than the national grid.

Wildlife Extra reports that Lake Naivasha has been in decline for 3 decades, with argiculture bearing much of the blame - Lake Naivasha is threatened by rampant water usage..

Lake Naivasha, Kenya's second largest lake, is an ecosystem in crisis. The lake level has dropped by three meters from its maximum, the area has shrunk to half its size, and precious wetlands are degraded beyond recognition. At the Fourth World Water Forum, in Mexico City, Earthwatch scientist Dr. David Harper of the University of Leicester presented evidence of three decades of ecological decline at Lake Naivasha and made urgent recommendations for the lake's sustainable future.

'Lake Naivasha was once considered one of the world's top ten sites for birds and a paradise of clear water, with beautiful papyrus and water lily fringes,' said Harper, principal investigator of Earthwatch's Lakes of the Rift Valley project. 'A haven for African wildlife and a major source of water for the lakeside's quickly growing population, the health of Lake Naivasha is critically important.' The ever-smaller lake is becoming an over-enriched muddy pool, which shortly will become unusable through the development of toxic blue-green algae blooms. Its inflowing rivers, formerly sparkling and permanent, are now muddy and unpredictable.'

Naivasha is being sacrificed because we require too much water. Almost everybody in Europe who has eaten Kenyan beans, Kenyan strawberries and gazed at Kenyan roses has bought Naivasha water. Tourists and hotel guests have drunk it, the Ol Karia geothermal power station is run by it, and local people depend on it for their daily lives.

Harper urged the support of three objectives to save Lake Naivasha from ecological collapse. First, an upper limit on basin extraction must be agreed upon and shared equitably and transparently, counteracting the dishonesty of over-use and ignorance of waste. Second, the lake wetlands and riparian vegetation in the basin must be restored to functionality. Finally, an educational campaign must be launched encouraging the principles of ecohydrology and the real value of water to all basin inhabitants.

WorldLakes.org points out that lake levels have fluctuated dramatically over the years and that the goethermal plant gets its water from groundwater rather than directly from the lakes - Managing Lake Naivasha.

Being a shallow lake with gently sloping shores, Naivasha’s shape and size have always been subject to great seasonal variations. When the explorer Joseph Thomson marched through the area in 1884, the lake was virtually dry, with cattle grazing around a small pond in the centre of the present site. A decade later, the lake was lapping at the cliff-face above the present-day railway line – more than 10 meters higher than today’s level.

With such huge fluctuations, massive evaporation, widespread abstractions by its farmers and flower growers, and – more worrying still – by smallholders and dairy farms on the rivers feeding the lake, many Naivasha residents believe a return to Thomson’s ‘pond’ is inevitable, even natural. ...

The new environmental awareness that appears to be sweeping through Naivasha has gained another high-profile supporter in the Kenya Electricity Generating Company, KenGen, whose Ol Karia power plant is a prominent lakeside landmark. There can be little argument against the geothermal plant, which remains one of Kenya’s most environmentally friendly sources of power and is expected to almost double its contribution to the beleaguered national grid over the next 20 years. However, fears do remain about the impact of drilling on the underground water flows and aquifers feeding the lake, and the LNRA has called for continuing monitoring of the situation.

KenGen maintains that its use of water for drilling the geothermal wells and operating the plant have a negligible effect on lake levels. Martin Mwangi, the Geothermal Development Manager, says the plant relies on steam extracted at great depths – between 1,000 and 2,500 meters - whereas the aquifers delivering water to the lake are less than 200 meters deep.

“The closeness of the Olkaria geothermal system to Lake Naivasha and the obvious use of natural steam in power generation give a very erroneous impression that the steam and the hot water are derived directly from the lake,” Mwangi says. “It is also not obvious to people that the ground itself is a huge reservoir capable of driving the geothermal systems in the Kenya Rift without a surface lake. We think the water we exploit is primarily derived from the Rift flanks where fractures penetrate between three and seven kilometers into the hot rocks, allowing the water to reach these rocks and rise back to the geothermal reservoir.”

While it seems unlikely that the geothermal power plants are the primary cause of shrinking lake levels, AllAfrica.com reports that there are other concerns facing the expansion of Kenya's geothermal power industry - Plans for Power Plant At Crater Creating Deep Rift.

The proposal to establish a geothermal power station in the Menengai Crater in Nakuru is being challenged by environmental conservationists who want the crater to be preserved as a tourist attraction.

Nakuru industrialists, on the other hand, argue that the generation of geothermal power will go a long way in helping meet the country's power needs. Business owners say they have lost expensive equipment as a result of power surges while others have had to buy generators to sustain production when power cuts occur. They say that the diesel power generators have made production more costly and uneconomical.

Textile manufacturers in Nakuru town say they are losing out to competitors in Egypt and South Africa where electricity tariffs are low and they can afford to price their products low. Mr M.S. Shah of Londra Textiles said that there was no likelihood of the textile industry recovering, despite government efforts to address the industry's issues, unless electricity tariffs were lowered.

Other manufacturers say they are unable to meet export delivery schedules when power is rationed during the dry season. Mr J. Bedi of Bedi Investments told the Sunday Nation that the rising cost of electricity and fuel was impacting negatively on production. His firm, which previously paid an electricity bill of Sh2 million per month, now pays Sh3.1 million.

Mr Bedi said the high cost of production was likely to force investors to relocate to other countries where electricity tariffs were low. Already, many manufacturing industries said they have reduced staff numbers to stay afloat.

"The establishment of another geothermal power station will go a long way in alleviating the electricity shortage this country has been having over the years. The Menengai Crater has been lying idle since independence. Let KenGen expedite the power generation," said a Nakuru industrialist. He added that since the Ol Karia Power Station and the Hell's Gate National Park have a symbiotic relationship, there is no reason for conservationists to think a geothermal power generation plant in the Menengai Crater would be harmful.

KenGen runs Africa's biggest geothermal power station at Ol Karia in Naivasha where it has many geothermal wells.

A former chairperson of the Nakuru Business Association, Mr Peter Kinya, said that several European countries had well-developed geothermal power generation stations that did not compromise the quality of the environment, arguing that the geothermal station would occupy only a small portion of the 90-square kilometre crater.

Hydro-geologist Mwangi Gichuki said he could not dismiss the many benefits that the country stood to gain by establishing a second geothermal station. "We need cheap power but KenGen must also ensure that the communities living in the neighbourhood of the crater are not exposed to poisonous chemicals such as sulphuric acid which forms when emissions such as hydrogen sulphide mix with water," he said.

He said that the wells which could be a kilometre deep were also likely to affect the hydrology of the area, considering that a number of boreholes are also being sank at Ol Bonita in the neighbourhood of the crater. "It is a catch-22 situation. We need electricity and at the same time we must ensure that the health of the communities in the neighbourhood is not compromised," Mr Gichuki said. The Menengai Crater geothermal station is expected to produce about 140MW.

Reuters has an article on the planned expansion of geothermal power in Kenya.

Kenya is focusing on developing its geothermal capacity to scale up electricity production and keep up with growing demand, the managing director of the country's biggest producer said on Thursday.

Kenya produces 128 MW of the renewable source but has the potential to put out 7,000 MW, Kenya Electricity Generating Company's (KenGen) Managing Director Eddie Njoroge told Reuters in an interview.

Geothermal power comes from steam made from underground water heated by the Earth's core, which is in turn used to turn turbines. Kenya is in an ideal position to exploit the resource, since the geologically active Great Rift Valley runs through the nation.

"We realise that although geothermal is more expensive upfront, in the long run, it is the cheapest option for this country," Njoroge said. It costs roughly $3.5 million to install a megawatt of geothermal power compared with about $2.5 million for hydropower, he said.