Augmenting climate-resilient energy infrastructure through National and International Standards for Renewables

Abstract

Kenya’s Energy sector has an installed capacity of 3.601 GW (grid-connected 3.321 GW and captive 280.76 MW), with 80.48% coming directly from Renewable energy sources. This huge percentage of renewable energy in the energy mix, however, is not reflected in the adoption or development of Standards. Standards help enhance the safety and efficiency of products, security, and quality assurance while ensuring interconnectivity and interoperability of components. Standards enable the dissemination of new technologies, good practises, and ultimately a climate-resilient energy infrastructure (CREI). To achieve CREI, standards act as a catalyst for advancing the attainment of economies of scale for renewables while also providing technical specifications to accelerate their deployment. This study thus addresses the ominous gap that exists due to the lack of a proper standard inventory across all renewables. In this way, this work addresses the irregular and at times inconsistent gap between the direct causal link between policy and standards on the one side and application areas such as management, information systems, and social use of renewable energy on the other. The study employed the Mixed Methods Research (MMR) approach to enable an understanding of the Renewable Energy (RE) standards environment in Kenya. In addition, realistic literature reviews and metaanalysis literature reviews were employed to deal with complex standards within the renewable energy sector. The study demonstrated that in the majority of Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs), major gaps in terms of standards exist for various RETs, the import of this being that the majority of RETs cannot be manufactured locally. The study also concludes that a low awareness exists of standard implementation, and further, due to a lack of awareness of technological innovations on the global level, the development of national standards and capacity building of competent staff (including techno-financial support for renewable energy technologies) have been significantly hampered. Subsequently, the study does appreciate the role of universities and higher educational institutions as being central in the research and analysis of renewable energy technologies as well as the adaptation and/or adoption of local and international standards.