Energy Futures

What dynamics of future-making are associated with the planning and implementation of large-scale renewable energy projects in previously marginalized dryland areas? Focusing on visions, epistemic mobilities and strategic planning practices related to geothermal development and Kenya’s energy policy, this project explores the risks and opportunities, land-use changes and governance of infrastructures at the interface of global and local dynamics.

• What visions of the future are associated with geothermal development and its direct-use applications? With what rationales and time horizons?

• How do institutional contexts at various scales encourage and facilitate – or interfere with – such visions and the resulting policies? Which actors are involved as drivers and/or knowledge providers?

• What are the ideas and approaches to finance and implement geothermal visions and infrastructures?

• What (international) networks, power relations, epistemologies, and socioeconomic conditions constitute the community of practice of (Kenyan) geothermal experts, and in what ways do they drive the development of “geothermal futures” in Kenya?

• How and by whom are direct-use applications and the related infrastructures planned, implemented, and financed? Where does the knowledge applied in these processes originate, and by whom and how was it produced and transferred to the Kenyan Rift Valley?

• What are the anticipated and observed impacts of geothermal development, its direct-use applications and associated rural electrification on local livelihoods, land-use changes, and social-ecological transformation?

• How does anticipation, planning, and implementation of geothermal development, its direct-use applications and associated rural electrification create or reinforce conflicts over land and over potential benefits?

• Qualitative methods (especially expert interviews and ethnography)
• Survey analysis

In the second phase of the CRC 228 we significantly deepened and broadened our knowledge and, in addition to our new empirical results, developed new conceptual approaches, most importantly the concepts of “ancillary infrastructure” and “governance of future-making” (Greiner and Klagge, 2024; Klagge et al., 2025; for details see below). While continuing our empirical research on the Baringo-Silali geothermal project (main empirical focus in the first phase), we now also included other geothermal projects in Kenya as well as the relevant international expert networks. Furthermore, we extended our research to large-scale wind and solar PV projects in Kenya. An additional and rather recent focus in the second phase was on green-hydrogen visions and projects, in which renewable electricity is used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen; the latter about to become an important energy carrier to decarbonize energy-intensive industries (e.g. cement, steel, fertilizer) and long-range transport. While most of our empirical research took place in Kenya, green-hydrogen developments and future-making are more advanced in Namibia, which is where we conducted exploratory work on that issue. In the following we summarize our most important second-phase results in seven points:

(1) Using political ecology as a theoretical background, we developed a novel conceptual approach to understand the distribution of harm and benefits from geothermal development, which analyses under which conditions such projects can become “landscapes of value” or are in danger of turning into “sacrifice zones” (Greiner, Klagge and Owino, 2023).

(2) Furthermore, based on our empirical findings we developed the concept of ancillary infrastructures and thus directly contributed to the CRC 228’s conceptual focus on infrastructuring. We define ancillary infrastructures as “new and/or retrofitted infrastructure of various types, such as access roads or water supply, necessary to implement and realize LSREPs [large-scale renewable energy projects], but not a direct part of the energy producing or transmitting complex” (Greiner and Klagge, 2024, p. 1). In Greiner and Klagge (2024) we show how temporalities are important in understanding their positive and negative externalities, and thus their role for achieving local acceptance of LSREPs.

(3) Julia Wummel, our anthropology PhD student, focused her research on geothermal knowledge providers and transfer as well as on expert networks. Wummel followed a cohort of experts from various Kenyan geothermal companies to prolonged training sessions in Iceland and back to Kenya. Based on this multisited-ethnography methodology, she found that participation in the program is a kind of rite of passage for the group of Kenyan experts, which provides them with a “stamp of approval” on completion of the measure and gives them a higher status in the Kenyan industry (Wummel, 2024, p. 435).

(4) Frankline Ndi, our geography postdoc, focused his research on large-scale wind and solar PV projects in Kenya with a specific focus on local participation and justice concerns. For such projects to be accommodated in and by communities, “national-level policies need to be complemented with institutionally backed micro-level measures and mechanisms seeking to address local needs and concerns around land acquisition” (Ndi, 2024a, p. 14; Ndi, 2024b). In the Kipeto wind project in Kajiado County, for example, landowners have benefited from newly built houses, are receiving rents for their land and are allowed to continue accessing the same land to support their traditional livelihoods (Ndi, 2024a, b). Further research on other wind as well as solar PV projects shows that local communities are not necessarily against the projects per se, but that their main concern is how to be involved in and to benefit from the project, through for instance employment and corporate social responsibility (CSR) investments.

(5) Based on comparative empirical research on oil exploration in Turkana, the LTWP wind project in Marsabit and geothermal development in Northern Kenya, together with our partner Kennedy Mkutu (USIU), we argue that the specific frontier situation in Northern Kenya in combination with the devolution of political power in Kenya opens up new spaces for negotiations and associated conflicts (Greiner et al., 2022, 2025; Mkutu, 2023). Further work focusing on multiscalar institutional conditions includes a paper on the opportunities and challenges of devolution for electrification in Kenya, which is based on a CRC-sponsored master’s thesis by Marie Volkert (Volkert and Klagge, 2022).

(6) Due to its new role and increasing significance for energy developments in Africa, we placed an additional focus on green-hydrogen visions, future-making and institutions. Based on findings during a research trip to Namibia and South Africa with Linus Kalvelage from C01 and PL Klagge’s associated PhD student Benedikt Walker, we showed how green-hydrogen developments there are closely related to anticipated green-hydrogen demand from Germany (Klagge and Walker, 2024; Kalvelage and Walker, 2024).

(7) Lastly, we developed a theoretical approach that we call “governance of future-making”, which focuses on how actors try to coordinate their expectations about future economic development in different contexts and across scales over time (Klagge et al., 2025). We conceptualize the emergence of new regional development trajectories as resulting from the use of governance instruments with an increasing bindingness, and illustrate this idea with our findings on green-hydrogen developments in Namibia and South Africa, (Klagge et al., 2025).

Large-scale renewable energy infrastructures in Kenya are mainly driven by Kenya’s Vision 2030, an ambitious plan to transform Kenya into a newly industrializing, middle-income country (Bauriedl and Klagge, 2018, Müller-Mahn et al., 2019). While there are some large wind projects (most prominently the Lake Turkana Wind Park) and plans for a coal-powered plant, the bulk of new energy capacity comes from geothermal development (Greiner and Klagge, 2021, in print). Baringo-Silali is the largest exploration site to date and has moved from preparing ancillary infrastructures and engaging local communities to successful drilling. Geothermal future-making in Baringo-Silali is governed by linkages among various stakeholders ranging from international investors such as the KfW and national government actors, especially the Geothermal Development Cooperation (GDC), to county and community representatives (Klagge et al., 2020, Klagge and Nweke-Eze, 2020).

Geothermal development in northern Kenya takes place in a frontier situation characterized by devolution, new land laws and a weak presence of state security forces. This creates a breeding ground for (inter-ethnic) conflicts over access to land (Greiner, 2020, Greiner et al., 2021), but also conflictual community-investor relations. While the Government of Kenya, KfW, and GDC, as well as private investors have articulated long-term visions regarding sustainability, green energies and economic growth (Klagge, 2021, Nweke-Eze and Kioko, in print), members of affected communities in Baringo have much more concrete goals such as jobs and access to drinking water. Resulting investor-community as well as inter-ethnic conflicts are fuelled by “economies of anticipation”, i.e. expectations of future developments, compensations and benefits.

By focusing on the different visions of the future associated with large-scale infrastructures, this project will contribute to our understanding of cross-scalar linkages and drivers in land-use change and social-ecological transformations.