KenGen's first sustainability report lands alongside a much bigger growth target. We break down what the 5,500MW includes, what it leaves out, and why one large piece of it is not actually renewable.

KenGen, the company that generates the majority of Kenya’s electricity, has sharply raised its long-term growth target. It now plans to develop a pipeline of 5,500 megawatts (MW) of new generation capacity, up from the 1,500MW it had set under its 10-year “Good to Great” (G2G) 2034 strategy. The announcement was made on Monday at the launch of the company’s first ever sustainability report, at an event held at Karura Forest in Nairobi.

For readers who do not follow the power sector closely, KenGen (the Kenya Electricity Generating Company) is the state-controlled, Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm that owns and runs most of Kenya’s power plants. It currently has an installed capacity of about 1,786MW. More than 90% of that comes from clean sources, mainly geothermal, which is heat tapped from deep underground in the Rift Valley, and hydropower, which is electricity from dams. KenGen sells nearly all of this power to Kenya Power, the utility that delivers it to homes and businesses. By its own measure, it holds more than 60% of the country’s installed generation capacity.

What the new 5,500MW target actually contains

The jump from 1,500MW to 5,500MW is large, and the makeup of the new figure is different from the old one.

The original 1,500MW target sat inside the G2G 2034 strategy. That plan leaned on geothermal, wind and solar, plus 500 megawatt-hours of battery storage, and carried a price tag of roughly US$4.3 billion (about KES 555 billion). The new, much bigger pipeline draws on a different set of sources. According to KenGen, it includes:

About 2,000MW (2GW) from nuclear power
More than 700MW from hydropower
An expanded push into geothermal, the company’s core strength

The 700MW of hydro is almost certainly the long-planned High Grand Falls dam on the Tana River, a 700MW project that KenGen confirmed in January it would lead.

Nuclear is in the pipeline, but it is not renewable

This is the part of the announcement that needs care. KenGen describes the whole 5,500MW as a “renewable energy development pipeline.” That label does not fit the nuclear component, and the difference is worth understanding.

Renewable energy comes from sources that naturally replenish, such as sunlight, wind, moving water and the Earth’s heat. Nuclear power does not work that way. It splits uranium, which is a mined and finite fuel, and it leaves radioactive waste that has to be managed safely for a very long time. What nuclear does share with renewables is that it is low-carbon, because running a nuclear plant produces almost no greenhouse gas. That is why it is often grouped under “clean” energy. But “clean” and “renewable” are not the same thing. The careful descriptions of Kenya’s nuclear programme, including KenGen’s own statements, normally call nuclear a “low-carbon baseload” option rather than a renewable one.

Strip the nuclear out, and KenGen’s genuinely renewable pipeline is closer to 3,500MW. That is still more than double the original target.

The nuclear plant is also a national project rather than a purely KenGen one. Kenya named KenGen the owner and operator of the country’s first nuclear plant in December 2025, working with the Nuclear Power and Energy Agency (NuPEA). The first phase is planned at about 2,000MW, on the shores of Lake Victoria in Siaya County, with construction targeted to begin in 2027 and the plant expected online around 2034. It is part of President William Ruto’s wider goal of lifting national capacity to 10,000MW, of which roughly 3,000MW would be nuclear. We have already laid out the full case for and against the Siaya nuclear plant, including the affordability argument and the long timeline. The short version is that nuclear is a bet on the 2030s, not a fix for this decade.

Why KenGen is aiming higher

The bigger target reflects a genuine shift in demand. Kenya’s grid is under strain. We explained recently how the country’s $1 billion Microsoft and G42 data centre at Olkaria stalled because the grid could not supply it, and the government has admitted to rationing power during evening peak hours. At the same time, electricity remains expensive. We covered the withdrawal of a planned tariff review in June, which froze base rates but left untouched the monthly fuel and foreign exchange charges that push up bills. More firm, low-cost generation is exactly what the country needs to power factories, data centres and households without blackouts. KenGen has been positioning Olkaria for this, including the geothermal-powered EcoCloud data centre it broke ground on in 2023.

The sustainability report

The second half of the announcement was the report itself. A sustainability report, often called an ESG report (for environmental, social and governance), is a structured account of how a company affects the world beyond its profits. For a listed firm like KenGen, it is a way to show investors, lenders and communities how it manages things like emissions, land, water and governance.

This is KenGen’s first such report. It covers the 2024/25 financial year and sets a baseline that future reports can be measured against. The headline figures, all reported by the company, include:

A renewable energy dispatch rate of 94.4%, meaning almost all the power it sent to the grid came from clean sources
6.9 million carbon credits generated
A carbon intensity of 0.06089 tonnes of CO2 per MWh, which KenGen says ranks among the lowest of any electricity generator in Africa
887,220 tree seedlings grown, 7% above target, and 850 hectares of degraded land restored. The company says it has planted more than four million trees so far and is aiming for nine million by 2034
237 students on KenGen Foundation scholarships, more than 42,300 households given access to clean water, and 69% of procurement, worth KES 10.01 billion, going to local suppliers
A 100% score on the report’s governance and transparency measures

The report was prepared using the Global Reporting Initiative standards, the UN Global Compact principles and the Nairobi Securities Exchange’s ESG disclosure guidelines, which are the main frameworks Kenyan listed companies use for this kind of disclosure.

What to watch

A 5,500MW pipeline is an ambition, not committed capacity. It is the list of projects KenGen wants to build, and most of it lands in the 2030s. The honest way to read the number is in parts: a large geothermal and hydropower programme that builds on what KenGen already does well, plus a 2,000MW nuclear plant that is a separate, national, next-decade undertaking and is not renewable. The sustainability report, for its part, gives outsiders a baseline to hold the company to.

The thing to watch now is financing and delivery, meaning whether these projects get funded and built close to schedule, because Kenya has a long record of energy targets that slipped. KenGen at least has a stronger base to work from than it did a few years ago. It posted a record KES 10.48 billion profit for the year to June 2025, up 54% on the year before.