Today14^th December 2011 at Lemigo Hotel, there took place a one day seminar on Geothermal Energy development targeting policy and decision makers. This workshop was organized by Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy Water and Sanitation Authority (EWSA) in collaboration with JICA(Japan International Cooperation Agency), with the aim to develop common understanding of geothermal energy development process among policy and decision makers in different government institutions.

“This project lies in hand with the overall government’s target of generating 1000MW by 2017, thus through Geothermal we are to generate 310MW” State minister of infrastructure Isumbingabo Francoise said. We need to generate energy for Industry and home use since the projects’ neighbors can use geothermal energy to dry rice or to light their homes, the state minister added.

In the seminar, five Japanese experts from WEST Japan Engineering Consultants (WEST JEC) gave presentations on technical, policy and institutional aspects based on their 20years rich experiences in geothermal energy development in other countries.

“JICA will endeavor to support Rwanda in both Energy infrastructures and Geothermal knowledge such that Rwandans will undertake such projects themselves. Currently 3 EWSA Engineers are receiving geothermal training in Japan” JICA Representative Kobayashi Hiroyuki said.

Geothermal energy is a clean form of power generation because the extracted hot springs used to turn power generating turbines is cooled and sent back beneath the earth surface where it is extracted.

The Government of Rwanda has conducted several surveys to confirm the potential of geothermal resource development and found out that the potential capacity would be about 700MW and that potential sites were Karisimbi, Gisenyi, Kinigi, and Bugarama. EWSA is currently conducting a detailed surface survey in Karisimbi, Gisenyi and Kinigi.

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