Nissan Praises Kenya on green revolution

Kenya’s launch of the continent’s largest wind power farm earlier this year has been hailed by Nissan Group of Africa.

The Lake Turkana Wind Power farm will add 13 per cent to the Kenyan energy grid when its 365 wind turbines are fully operational, generating 310 Megawatts of power.

“As President Uhuru Kenyatta noted, when he launched the plant, this is a major step forward in Kenya becoming the continental leader in renewable energy and achieving its own ambitious green energy target of 100%,” said Nissan Group of Africa’s director of sales and operations Jim Dando.

The Nissan LEAF is historically the world’s best-selling Electric Vehicle, continually setting new benchmarks for its intelligent mobility and associated technological breakthroughs and is a standard-bearer for the drive for zero emissions across the world. By March 2019, Nissan LEAF had surpassed sales of 400,000 vehicles, an EV record marking a truly global shift toward sustainable mobility.

As the final frontier for the automotive industry, Africa has one of the lowest motorisation rates in the world, the youngest population and the fastest-growing middle class, but it could also become the one of the world’s fastest developing polluters, he said, due to the scourge of cheap used vehicles being imported into the African market.

There are only three real solutions to this, said Dando, an aggressive automotive policy outlawing the importation of grey vehicles and paving the way for the establishment of an indigenous automotive manufacturing sector; an unequivocal commitment by African governments to improving fuel quality; and, a progressive incentivisation programme, underpinned by a clean energy strategy, to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles.

“Not all African countries can immediately adopt electric vehicles because of inconsistent power supplies and a lack of requisite infrastructure, which explains why the world acclaimed EV, the Nissan LEAF has only been introduced thus far to South Africa and Mauritius.

“In some countries, such as South Africa, the dependence upon coal fired power generators tends to negate any benefit offered by EV, Kenya however thanks to its progressive energy policies and rich natural energy resources in the shape of hydro, thermal and now wind, provides a textbook confluence of factors for the introduction and adoption of EV as a very real solution to the current global pollution crisis precipitated by fossil fuels.”

Nissan looks forward to working with the government of Kenya and the relevant stakeholders to help them all work towards protecting the environment and the establishment of a sustainable local automotive sector, which in turn will create sustainable jobs and produce cleaner, safer and affordable vehicles to the market.

“We applaud the government of Kenya’s commitment to renewable energy and we hope it will serve to spur on other countries on the continent to find sustainable solutions to a crisis that is fast becoming the most critical of our generation.”