Investment papers on African businesses tend to give pages to market size and a paragraph to electricity. Gene Grand believes that balance is often the wrong way round. Operational questions, he argues, predict returns more reliably than market sizing, and few operational questions carry more weight than power. It is also one of the dependencies that gets the least attention in diligence.
“Very often, the paragraph on electricity tells you more than the pages on market size,” he says.
An unusual starting position
Kenya is a strong place to test that view. Nearly 90% of the country’s electricity generation comes from renewable sources, according to the International Energy Agency. In 2023, geothermal provided the largest share at 47%, followed by hydro at 21%, wind at 16% and solar at 4%.
The power sector has around 3.3 gigawatts of installed capacity, of which 950 megawatts is geothermal, and the IEA ranks the country among the lowest-cost geothermal power developers in the world. Kenya’s National Energy Compact adds that the country leads the African continent in installed geothermal capacity and ranks sixth globally.
Baseload that does not depend on the weather
Geothermal plants run around the clock, whatever the wind or cloud cover is doing. That makes them a source of steady baseload power, the kind energy-hungry operations need.
The value showed in July 2025, when Kenya recorded a new system peak demand of 2,362.28 megawatts on 23 July. In its report on the record, KenGen said its geothermal plants supplied 31.85% of the day’s energy, with its hydro plants adding a further 25.42%. Between them, those two domestic renewable sources covered more than half of what the country used.
Less exposure to imported fuel
Imported oil does feature in Kenya’s energy supply, but the IEA notes that it is concentrated mostly in transport. The government’s own compact links the high cost of energy to reliance on imported fossil fuels, which is part of why the electricity system’s renewable base matters so much.
For a business, the practical effect is that power costs are less tied to swings in global fuel markets than they would be on a grid built around imported diesel or gas.
“If your electricity price follows the oil market, part of your margin is being set by people you will never meet,” he says. “A renewable grid takes a good deal of that uncertainty away.”
The case for energy-intensive operations
Factories, agro-processing plants and other energy-intensive businesses have the most to gain. Kenya’s plans point in the same direction. The National Energy Compact aims for 100% clean energy in the national power system by 2030, alongside an increase in renewable capacity to 5,952 megawatts and an 8,000-kilometre expansion of the transmission network.
Clean baseload now, backed by a published plan to expand it, gives investors a credible case for supporting energy-intensive operations in Kenya.
Questions to settle before committing
Strong generation at a national level does not, by itself, guarantee reliable supply at a particular site. What an operating business depends on is the connection that serves it, so an investor should confirm which part of the grid the site draws from, how its supply has performed in practice, and what backup is in place and at what cost.
Kenya’s own plans work in an investor’s favour here. The National Energy Compact sets out a programme of improvement to 2030, including bringing system losses down to 15%, extending the transmission network and reviewing electricity tariffs every three years to keep them predictable. Checking whether those planned upgrades reach a given location is a sensible part of the same diligence.
“Two businesses on the same grid can have completely different experiences of it,” he says. “The site-level answer is the one that shows up in your costs.”
This, as Gene Grand sees it, is what makes Kenya’s renewable base commercially significant. Power stops being a background risk and becomes something an investor can underwrite, and in some sectors, something to build an investment case around.
