Italian major Eni's chief executive Claudio Descalzi held talks in Nairobi with Kenya's president Uhuru Kenyatta to discuss ways of developing efficient and sustainable access to energy resources for local communities especially biofuels, Eni said on Friday in a statement.
The talks covered circular economy initiatives, including the recovery, regeneration and re-use of agricultural and food waste produced in Kenya for power generation, making a "decisive" contribution to the country's decarbonisation process by partially replacing fossils fuels, said the statement.
Descalzi and Kenyatta mapped out a multi-year plan to create incentives for the separated collection of food waste and agricultural residues, "the ideal raw material for biofuel plants produce bio-diesel, bio-jet and bio-ethanol, leveraging the circular economy technologies developed by Eni," the statement added.
The multi-year plan also includes a study for the conversion of Mombasa's refinery into a bio-refinery, the statement noted.
"With these initiatives, Kenya will assume a leadership role in the decarbonization process of the African continent, the statement said.
Amendments to current production sharing contracts were signed on the sidelines of Descalzi and Kenyatta's meeting. These relate to three exploration permits in Mombasa's offshore.
Eni has been operating in Kenya since 2013 through its subsidiary Eni Kenya, which operates six offshore exploration blocks.
Eni invests over half of its budget in Africa, supporting and promoting local development, according to the statement.
