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STORY: KENYA / GEOTHERMAL POWER
TRT: 5.33
SOURCE: UNEP
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 10 OCTOBER 2010, NAIROBI, KENYA
FILE / GOOGLE GRAPH
1. Close up, rotating globe
RECENT / UNEP / NAVAISHA, OLKARIA GEOTHERMAL POWER STATION, NAIROBI, KENYA
2. Wide shot, Olkaria geothermal power station
3. Wide shot, geothermal station
4. Med shot, geothermal well
5. Wide shot, steam tanks
6. Med shot, power lines
7. Aerial shot, zebras feeding on grass
8. Wide shot, wilder beasts feeding on grass
9. Close up, Olkaria gate entrance sign board
10. Med shot, giraffe in the middle of a bush
11. Wide shot, geothermal station
12. Med shot, geothermal pipes
13. Wide shot, exploration well
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Cyrus W. Karingithi, Assistant Manager, Resource Development, Kenya Electricity Generating Company Limited (Kengen):
“ The project started by United Nations Development Programme that funded the first exploration; the service exploration which means geochemistry, geology, geophysics, environment and heat from measurements. And it is from that study that Olkaria was identified for the first exploration wells. And they found reasonable steam, low pressure steam and it is from that study that they were able to start drilling for the main power plant; which is Olkaria One Power plant; which is now currently 30 years old with 45 megawatts on line.”
15. Close up, exploration wells
16. Close up, employees at the geothermal station
17. Wide shot, bush and drilling system
18. Close up, drilling system
19. Med shot, one of the engineers in the drilling system
18. Close up, drilling meter
19. SOUNDBITE (English) Peerke de Bakker, Global Environment Facility, UNEP:
“We have encouraged the scientists working in the geothermal development to come up with more accurate data and data that can be combined so that the risk of a fail drilling is now less; and that greatly reduces the cost of geothermal exploitation.”
20. SOUNDBITE (English) Cyrus W. Karingithi, Assistant Manager, Resource Development, Kenya Electricity Generating Company Limited (Kengen):
‘From the first power plant which is Olkaria One, the wells were about 1,000 metres. Using the UNEP’s contribution through the study, the joint geophysical invasion study, we were able to identify reservoir much deeper up to 3,000 metres and such that we are able to tap more power; the wells now on average are about 7 megawatts and initially they were only 2.5 megawatts. So that’s a lot of power 7,000,000 watts, which is enough to power the whole of Naivasha and its environs.”
21. Wide shot, geothermal systems
22. Close up, geothermal systems
23. Close up, measuring meter
24. Med shot, power lines
25. Wide shot, several power lines
26. Close up, woman walking past carrying firewood
27. Med shot, woman transferring charcoal from plastic tins to a paper bag
28. SOUNDBITE (English) Achim Steiner, Executive Director, UNEP:
“ The longer Rift Valley of East Africa, there are thousands of megawatts of proven potential for geothermal power generation. It is a clean and increasingly cheap source of energy that also provides countries with inability to become less dependent on world plus a few markets and to develop their domestic capacity to generate power for their people and their economies in the future.”
29. Wide shot, Olkaria geothermal station
30. Med shot, steam systems
31. Med shot, drill
32. Wide shot, Olkaria geothermal
34. Close up, rose flowers
35. Wide shot, rose flowers in the farm
36. Wide shot, flower farm director standing in front of the flower farm building
37. Med shot, flower farm
38. Wide shot, flower farm
39. SOUNDBITE (English) Director, Oserian Production
“The three geothermal wells we have here, two of them we are using for generating geothermal power, electrivity, and one of them we use before generating heat which we use to heat the green houses to control decease inside the green houses. Here in Kenya we have very hot days but also very cold nights, so when we get the cold nights the relative humidity is rising in the early morning so we pass the heat through these pipes basically to push the humid air out of the vents so that we don’t need to use fungicide because we are controlling the relative humidity in the green house and preventing condensation of the leaves or on the flowers. Here you can see a pipe where we are going to basically in the future using this pipe to inject carbon dioxide into the green house to enhance the growth of the plant and increase the photosynthesis of the crops itself which should increase the production capacity, and that’s basically ‘part and parcel’ of the geothermal project that we are doing will extract the C02 source from the geothermal well and inject it to the green house to convert that C02 into oxygen. And in the background there you can see where we were farming commercially some years ago and by going into hydroponics we don’t need to rotate to the land anymore we can stay insitu so we now keep the farming are in one place and that enable us to release a lot of the land and back into conservation.”
40. Wide shot, rose flowers
41. Close up, rose flowers
42. Med shot, Oserian Director showing a pipe that will be used to inject carbon dioxide into the greenhouse
43. Close up, rose flower plant
44. Med shot, one of the employees at the flower farm picking rose flowers
45. Wide shot, flower packaging area
46. Close up, Oserian Flower Farm sign board
47. Wide shot, greenhouse
48. Tracking shot, external flower farm
49. Wide shot, steeply slope
50. Med shot, zebra walking
51. Med shot, wilder beast feeding on grass
52. SOUNDBITE (English) Peerke de Bakker, Global Environment Facility, UNEP:
“The geothermal prospects of Kenya itself will in the next years be developed. But the success of the project is even over and beyond because it showcased also to the other countries in the region that geothermal is not a risky technology any longer but a credible addition, a credible completion to the existing power mix. Together with World Bank, we have engaged ourselves in a project called ARGEO, which stands for the African Rift Geothermal Development Project that encourages the countries in developing their geothermal resources.”
53. Wide shot, exploration wells
55. Close up, map
56. Wide shot, greenhouse
The landscape around Navaisha town, about an hour’s drive from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, is doctored with snaking smooth white pipes and steel drums rather like a modern day snakes-and-ladders set.
Olkaria Geothermal Power Station is probably the world’s only energy station in a national park and here giraffes graze close to the fence, seemingly unfazed by the noise and whirr of electricity producing turbines.
SOUNDBITE (English) Cyrus W. Karingithi, Assistant Manager, Resource Development, Kenya Electricity Generating Company Limited (Kengen):
“The project started by United Nations Development Programme that funded the first exploration; the service exploration which means geochemistry, geology, geophysics, environment and heat from measurements. And it is from that study that Olkaria was identified for the first exploration wells. And they found reasonable steam, low pressure steam and it is from that study that they were able to start drilling for the main power plant; which is Olkaria One Power plant; which is now currently 30 years old with 45 megawatts on line.”
In a large landscape with untapped resources deep underground, finding the most productive areas to drill can be challenging.
SOUNDBITE (English) Peerke de Bakker, Global Environment Facility, UNEP:
“We have encouraged the scientists working in the geothermal development to come up with more accurate data and data that can be combined so that the risk of a fail drilling is now less; and that greatly reduces the cost of geothermal exploitation.”
SOUNDBITE (English) Cyrus W. Karingithi, Assistant Manager, Resource Development, Kenya Electricity Generating Company Limited (Kengen):
‘From the first power plant which is Olkaria One, the wells were about 1,000 metres. Using the UNEP’s contribution through the study, the joint geophysical invasion study, we were able to identify reservoir much deeper up to 3,000 metres and such that we are able to tap more power; the wells now on average are about 7 megawatts and initially they were only 2.5 megawatts. So that’s a lot of power 7,000,000 watts, which is enough to power the whole of Naivasha and its environs.”
Affordable and reliable energy helps social and economic development, but high oil prices, drought alongside along side an unprecedented population increase means that much of Africa is facing an acute energy crisis.
SOUNDBITE (English) Achim Steiner, Executive Director, UNEP:
“ The longer Rift Valley of East Africa, there are thousands of megawatts of proven potential for geothermal power generation. It is a clean and increasingly cheap source of energy that also provides countries with inability to become less dependent on world plus a few markets and to develop their domestic capacity to generate power for their people and their economies in the future.”
Olkaria Geothermal Power Project is next to farms that produce some of the finest flowers in the world. The “Oserian” flower farm makes good use of this geothermal energy from the less productive, but already existing wells that were drilled before the testing phase and the UNEP/DGEF intervention .
SOUNDBITE (English) Director, Oserian Production
“The three geothermal wells we have here, two of them we are using for generating geothermal power, electrivity, and one of them we use before generating heat which we use to heat the green houses to control decease inside the green houses. Here in Kenya we have very hot days but also very cold nights, so when we get the cold nights the relative humidity is rising in the early morning so we pass the heat through these pipes basically to push the humid air out of the vents so that we don’t need to use fungicide because we are controlling the relative humidity in the green house and preventing condensation of the leaves or on the flowers. Here you can see a pipe where we are going to basically in the future using this pipe to inject carbon dioxide into the green house to enhance the growth of the plant and increase the photosynthesis of the crops itself which should increase the production capacity, and that’s basically ‘part and parcel’ of the geothermal project that we are doing will extract the C02 source from the geothermal well and inject it to the green house to convert that C02 into oxygen. And in the background there you can see where we were farming commercially some years ago and by going into hydroponics we don’t need to rotate to the land anymore we can stay insitu so we now keep the farming are in one place and that enable us to release a lot of the land and back into conservation.”
SOUNDBITE (English) Peerke de Bakker, Global Environment Facility, UNEP:
“The geothermal prospects of Kenya itself will in the next years be developed. But the success of the project is even over and beyond because it showcased also to the other countries in the region that geothermal is not a risky technology any longer but a credible addition, a credible completion to the existing power mix. Together with World Bank, we have engaged ourselves in a project called ARGEO, which stands for the African Rift Geothermal Development Project that encourages the countries in developing their geothermal resources.”
This kind of innovation is not only a boon for Africa, but also attracts foreign expertise and investment. During the exploratory drilling, KenGen used local equipment but now uses the Great Wall of China Drilling Company for deeper and more efficient wells – another demonstration of South South Cooperation.
