In rural Kenya, the daily ritual of cooking is a battle against time and soot – mothers gathering firewood, smoke from cooking fire filling homes, clothes and lungs coated in layers of ash, painting the walls black.
It is the life of 90 percent of households; millions of people, in what is a quiet struggle for a clean flame. So, how can they move away from the choking, billowing smoke to clean fuels?
Policymakers are grappling with how to re-engineer county governments to drive the clean energy agenda and unlock the potential of renewable sources like solar and geothermal, not just for power grids, but for homes and small businesses.
This is a subtle acknowledgment that national-level solution is not enough; there’s need to empower counties to close the gap from the ground up.
The journey toward a cleaner energy future is already underway, but there are challenges that counties, investors, and other players face.
A year ago, the government began implementing the LPG Growth Strategy, an initiative to transition 80 percent of the population from biomass to clean LPG by 2026.
The strategy aims to boost the per capita LPG consumption from 6.5 kg to 15 kg by 2030 by upgrading the infrastructure, introducing LPG for schools, availing subsidised cylinders, and enacting legal and regulatory reforms.
While LPG uptake within urban centres has made tremendous gains, rural areas still lag due to reported county regulatory barriers.
Investors say county levies are exorbitant and often come in multiple forms-from branding, parking, and licence fees to business permits. They cite hostility from county and law enforcement officials.
Counties need to generate revenue, but they also need to keep energy prices affordable to promote adoption.
The Energy Regulatory Authority is urging counties to adopt incentives like Time-of-Use tariffs to reduce operational costs and drive industrial growth, and partner with the private sector on captive energy generation and storage.
According to Dr Stephen Ikiki, Senior Economist, National Treasury, inter-county collaborations could help unlock innovative financing models, such as blended finance or green bonds. This approach would allow counties to attract and negotiate large-scale sustainable energy investments, weaving them directly into their budgets.
Counties have a different story. For instance, in Kilifi County, Mr Wilfred Baya, the Director of Energy, shared how the county is empowering communities to lead the charge.
They have adopted a community-driven model where former charcoal sellers are now the biggest LPG investors and ambassadors. The county is also allocating land for LPG refill infrastructure and considering new policy incentives to stimulate investment. These efforts are making energy a central part of the County Integrated Development Plan.
The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) is supporting the transition through regulation that bolsters business operations for solutions like Autogas, smart LPG meters, and reticulation, says Stella Opakas, Deputy Director Mid and Downstream Petroleum.
The Energy (Integrated National Energy Plan) Regulations, 2025, have been gazetted to enhance energy access and reliability in counties through the integrated national energy planning committee that draws representation from the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, Council of Governors, Epra and sector agencies.
One of its primary tasks is to track implementation of the county energy plans and the integrated national energy plan. The challenge now is finding the right balance.