A U.N. project being launched in Kenya will help about a dozen tea plantations build mini-hydropower dams to cut their energy costs, and maybe even export excess production of clean electricity to the national grid or to rural electrification schemes.
"Tea production needs lots of water, so most of these sites are located near good sources," Catherine Vallee, a senior U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) official said. "Many are suitable for small hydropower projects and some have potential to produce more electricity than they can use." Work on the mini-hydropower projects, each churning out one or two megawatts of clean energy, will begin within a year.
The scheme is backed by the African Development Bank. European Union funds also are being used to see if it could independently power neighbouring villages in remote communities with some of the lowest electricity access rates in the world. UNEP will give about $3.4 million to the plan, which it hopes will draw a further $25 million from bilateral donors, financial institutions, governments and the tea producers themselves.
The project eventually will be rolled out in several African countries : Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. But it is starting in Kenya, which is among the world's top three black tea producers with India and Sri Lanka.
Kenya earned just over $670 million last year from tea exports, the country's top source of hard currency, and its farmers often complain about unreliable electricity supply. Power accounts for about a quarter of tea growers' costs and production requires a stable energy supply. Power cuts lead to lower quality, experts say, and reliable but costly diesel back-up generators are only available to the bigger companies.
"The others often go out of business," Vallee said. "The aim of this project is to help them access clean, renewable power." Pakistan is Kenya's top buyer, taking about a third of its tea exports, followed by Egypt, Britain, Afghanistan and Sudan.
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