Kenya’s plan to develop a mega scale green hydrogen facility is less a symbolic climate gesture than an attempt to leverage structural advantages in geothermal, wind, and solar generation to enter an increasingly competitive global hydrogen market.
Kenya’s renewable base is unusually diversified for an emerging economy. Installed geothermal capacity already exceeds 900 MW, with technical potential widely estimated at more than 10,000 MW, primarily along the Rift Valley. Wind resources are anchored by large scale projects such as Lake Turkana, while high solar irradiation provides predictable daytime generation. Offshore wind potential in the Indian Ocean, often cited in the range of 20 GW to 76 GW, adds a longer term option for scale, although commercial timelines for offshore development in East Africa remain uncertain. For hydrogen developers, the significance lies not in any single resource but in the ability to blend baseload geothermal with variable wind and solar to improve electrolyzer utilization rates, a critical driver of hydrogen production costs.
The proposed facility’s location near Mombasa reflects a deliberate effort to align production with export logistics. Coastal siting enables direct access to shipping infrastructure for hydrogen derivatives such as ammonia, which currently dominate long distance hydrogen trade due to storage and transport constraints. It also allows the use of seawater rather than freshwater, an important consideration in a country where water scarcity is already an economic and political issue. While desalination adds incremental capital and operating costs, studies from existing hydrogen projects suggest that water supply typically represents a marginal share of total hydrogen production costs compared with electricity and electrolyzer CAPEX, particularly at scale.
Yet export proximity alone does not guarantee competitiveness. Kenya would be entering a market where producers in the Middle East, Australia, and Latin America are pursuing similar export oriented strategies, often backed by lower financing costs or direct state support. The underlying question is whether Kenya’s renewable electricity costs, combined with high electrolyzer utilization from geothermal baseload, can offset higher perceived country risk premiums that tend to raise the cost of capital for large infrastructure projects.
The inclusion of a planned data center with capacity exceeding 100 MW introduces an additional layer of complexity. Co locating energy intensive digital infrastructure with hydrogen production could improve overall project economics by smoothing electricity demand and monetizing renewable generation during periods when hydrogen output is constrained by storage or export capacity. Data centers require high reliability rather than purely low cost power, a profile well matched to geothermal backed systems. However, the scale implied would place the facility among the larger data centers globally, raising questions about grid integration, redundancy requirements, and long term demand certainty in the regional digital market.
Beyond energy and export considerations, the project’s emphasis on local manufacturing and workforce development addresses a recurring criticism of large scale clean energy investments in emerging markets. Plans to assemble electrolyzers domestically and develop renewable component supply chains could retain more value within Kenya, rather than limiting local benefits to construction and land leasing. Partnerships with universities and vocational institutions to train engineers and technicians suggest an attempt to build durable industrial capability, although success will depend on whether procurement strategies genuinely prioritize local participation over imported turnkey systems.
