AND YOU WONDER THAT THE rIGHT HATES RENEWABLES?:

Geophysicist Nicholas Mariita remembers when Kenya's geothermal sector wasn't the high-tech powerhouse it is today. In the early 1980s, he regularly joined teams of scientists on expeditions into the country's Great Rift Valley to survey for potential sites where the Earth could be tapped for a prime subterranean energy source. They weren't looking for oil or coal -- they were looking for heat, the key resource in geothermal power.

The Great Rift Valley was still wild then, so dodging snakes and buffalo was part of the job. "One in a while, we'd be chased by a buffalo and have to climb into a tree, and if it was a clever one, it'd flick urine at you with its tail," Mariita recalls. "Those were the kind of funny things we went through."

Their risk has yielded results. In 2020 and 2021, some 48 percent of all electricity generated in Kenya came from geothermal -- the highest share of any country. And as the world seeks to increase both the quantity and cleanliness of its electricity, it's a cheap, bountiful and low-carbon option Kenya plans to increasingly rely on.

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