Kenya's Geothermal Rapid Development Road and Its Enlightenment To China's Geothermal Power Generation

Kenya is located in the eastern branch of East Africa Great Rift Valley and is rich in geothermal resources under the action of modern volcanoes. In the past 20 years, with the strong support of the government, Kenya’s geothermal power generation industry has developed rapidly. By the end of 2020, the installed capacity has reached 865MW and become one of the fastest growing county in geothermal power generation in the world. China is dominated by medium-to-low temperature geothermal energy and the amount of direct use has ranked first in the world for many years. High temperature geothermal resources are mainly concentrated in Southern Tibet-Western Sichuan-Western Yunnan and Taiwan. Due to the uncoordinated between resource and demand, the development of the geothermal power generation industry is slow, and by the end of 2020, the in operation installed capacity of power generation was only 44.56MW, which is far from the development goal of the "13th Five-Year Plan". By analyzing the reasons for the rapid development of geothermal power generation in Kenya and problems of China’s geothermal industry, four policy recommendations are proposed to promote the development of China’s geothermal power generation industry: the government makes great efforts to research on high-temperature geothermal resources’ distribution, supports the application of geothermal mineral rights, issues active geothermal power generation policies, further researches on geothermal energy development and utilization technology and equipment.