Kenyan Geothermal Gets $60 Million From African Development Bank

(Bloomberg) -- The African Development Bank will lend $60 million to finance a geothermal power project in Kenya.

The funds will go to state-owned Geothermal Development Co. to buy three drilling rigs, according to Gabriel Negatu, regional director at the Abidjan, Ivory Coast-based financial institution.

Kenya “has enormous potential in geothermal power capacity which it has not fully exploited,” Negatu said in an interview in Nairobi.

The country has been tapping geothermal power in the Rift Valley since the 1980s and has the potential to add another 10 gigawatts, according to Geothermal Development. It generated 43 percent of its electricity from the underground steam last year, data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows.