Senate Committee on Energy chaired by Nyeri Senator Wahome Wamatinga held a meeting with Kenya Association of Manufacturers. 

The meeting was to discuss the role of the manufacturing sector in energy space and the promotion of sustainable energy use in Kenya. 

The acting Chief Executive of the Association, Mr. Tobias Alando said that manufacturers consume up 67% of the electricity produced in the country with large commercial and industrial consumers being the major users of electrical energy. 

Narok Senator Ole Kina asked the association why Kenya Power Company loses 23.4 % of power produced.

Mr. Alando said that 10% were technical losses as a result of transmission of power. This 10% is covered in tariff structure, but 13.4% loss are commercial whereby customers are metered, but they don't pay the bills or the clients are connected to the electricity grid but they are not billed due to lack of meters.

KAM said that 800 gigawatt hour per year geothermal energy is lost due to not being evacuated to various load centres.

800 gigawatts hours is appropriately 71% of what was purchased from petro-thermal generators during the period 2023-2024 at 1127 GWh, meaning that the uptake from expensive petro-thermal is unnecessarily higher while geothermal capacity is stranded. 

The Association proposed to the committee that manufacturers should be given incentives to manufacture at night so that they can utilize the 800 GWh geothermal steam that is released to the air instead of being utilized by consumers. 

Members present in the meeting were Vice Chairperson Elgeyo Marakwet Senator William Kisang, Narok Senator Ole Kina, and Tana River Senator Danson Mungatana.