Menengai’s Broken Promise: How Kenya’s Geothermal Model Lost the Steam Thematic image of the Olkaria Geothermal Field Kenya’s Menengai geothermal project was sold as a model of modern public-private partnership. The state would carry the difficult and expensive burden of geothermal exploration and drilling. Private power producers would then build, own and operate power plants. Geothermal Development Company would supply the steam; the independent power producers would convert it into electricity; Kenya Power would buy the output. On paper, the arrangement was elegant. In practice, Menengai has exposed a far more uncomfortable reality: Kenya’s public steam-supply model is not delivering the certainty it promised. Menengai Phase I was designed to produce 105 megawatts from three 35 MW plants. GDC’s own project page says the three plants were awarded to Globeleq Menengai Geothermal, Sosian Menengai Geothermal Power and OrPower Twenty Two under a build-own-operate structure. Yet the ...
Unlocking the Brussels Sandstone Member How Integrated Reservoir Science Is Rewriting Geothermal Potential in Southwest Netherlands By: Robert Buluma Pull Quote “The real issue was not the geology — it was that the geology was being interpreted through the wrong lens.” For decades, the Netherlands was defined by one thing underground: natural gas. The Groningen field didn’t just fuel an economy — it shaped it. But as production winds down due to seismicity concerns and policy reversal, a quiet shift is underway beneath the surface of Dutch energy planning. The next chapter is not deeper gas. It is heat. And one of the most interesting candidates sits in an unlikely place: the Brussels Sandstone Member (BSM) — a shallow, heterogeneous Eocene reservoir in southwest Netherlands. Not a high-enthalpy volcanic system. Not a turbine-spinning giant like Olkaria or Menengai. But in a country built on district heating, industrial heat demand, and greenhouse agriculture, even moderate-t...