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East African Djibouti to spend $20 million for geothermal exploration

East African Djibouti to spend $20 million for geothermal exploration Djibouti, Africa (source: flickr/ Stéphane Pouyllau, creative commons)
Alexander Richter 19 Oct 2011

African country of Djibouti is planning to spend up to $20 million over the next two years to explore geothermal power sources in the country. Funding will come from the Global Environment Facility, the World Bank and OPEC.

Reported by BusinessWeek, the East African country of Djibouti “plans to spend $19.6 million over the next two years exploring for geothermal-power sources”, as the country tries to deal with an increasing electricity shortage.

The funding for the project will come from the Global Environment Facility, as well as the World Bank and OPEC. It is expected that drilling could be completed by 2013, with development plans for a geothermal power plant of 56 MW capacity by 2018.

Currently the country relies completely on oil for electricity generation, it currently has an effective power generation capacity of 57 MW. It is expected that the peak power demand of the country is at 75 MW, with an increase of up to 219 MW is expected by 2035. Just in the next 3-4 years it is expected that the country will need roughly twice the power generation capacity of today.

Source: BusinessWeek