Abstract:
Kenya expects a high growth in energy demand due to its high demographic and economic growth
as well as increasing industrialization. In that regard, the government of Kenya has already shown
interest to expand its power supply which includes coal-fired power plants. However, many previous
studies conducted to evaluate the Kenyan energy planning scenarios were limited to technical
aspect such as dynamic power consumption and demand forecasting; techno-environmental aspect
such as low carbon capacity expansion; techno-economic electricity expansion aspect and economic,
techno-environmental electricity expansion aspect. The concern of evaluating all the potential Kenyan
power options against sustainability dimensions as a whole was not addressed since selecting power
technology options has become a multidimensional problem. Therefore, this study aimed at prioritizing
Kenyan power technology options using sustainable dimensions: Economic, Social, Environmental and
Technical. This research applied Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method which is an interesting
tool able to bring together several variables to handle a decision making problem. Hence, energy
options were evaluated against the four sustainable dimensions (Economic, Social, Environmental
and Technical) combining 17 energy indicators and a hybrid AHP–TOPSIS technique was used for
that purpose. Results showed that Solar PV and Wind are the most promising technologies in
Kenya. Although CSP has not been privileged by Kenyan policymakers, it ranks among the first-three
promising technologies, except for economic scenario raking this option the last. Five different analyzed
scenarios (Economic privileged, Technical privileged, Environmental privileged, Social privileged, Equal
importance) showed the robustness of Solar PV in the all sustainable dimensions. This study has
provided a critical policy contribution to the Kenyan government and energy projects investors by
solving the dilemma of technologies prioritization in capacity expansion
