Fine, jail term proposed in new solar heating rules
A solar water heating system. They help reduce electricity bill.
Owners of all new and existing buildings risk six months in jail or a fine of Sh20,000 should they fail to include designs for installation of solar water heaters if new proposals by the government aimed at increasing the adoption of renewable energies are adopted.
The draft Energy (Solar Water Heating) Regulations, 2022 developed by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) require all premises to have solar water heating systems.
The regulations were published on Friday for public input.
“The main objective of the Regulations is to streamline the manufacture, importation, design, installation and solar water heating systems in Kenya,” said Epra Director-General Daniel Kiptoo in a notice.
The targeted premises include all new and existing domestic dwellings or residential houses and commercial buildings, including hotels, lodges, clubs, restaurants, cafeterias and laundries. Others are hospitals and health centres, and educational institutions such as universities, colleges, boarding schools and other learning institutions.
“All premises shall have in their design a provision for solar water heating system installation,” state the regulations.
“A developer of a housing estate, a promoter of the construction, an owner of the premises or an architect or an engineer engaged in the design or construction of premises shall be responsible for compliance,” they add.
This is Epra’s latest attempt to enforce mandatory installation of solar water heating systems in Kenya after a previous attempt failed. The energy regulator had in 2012 gazetted the Energy (Solar Water Heating) Regulations, 2012 whose objective was to promote uptake of solar water heating in industrial, commercial and residential buildings.
However, the Regulations faced challenges in their implementation and were set aside in 2018.
In those regulations, premises within the jurisdiction of the Urban Areas and Cities Act with hot water requirements exceeding 100 litres per day were required to install and use solar water heating systems to cater for at least 60 per cent of their hot water requirements.
Among the major reasons the regulations were revoked was that the Sh1 million fine provided for in case of violation of the regulations was contrary to the Statutory Instruments Act of 2013 that limits fines and jail terms to Sh20,000 and six months, respectively.
Landlords, tenants and homeowners had also protested that implementation of the regulations would be punitive as retrofitting their premises would be costly.
It was also found that investment in the heaters would only be recouped after about 10 years, making it economically unviable.
“Additional cost of solar water heaters was antithetical to the government’s objective of providing access to affordable housing,” noted researchers from JKUAT Enterprises Ltd, who were hired by Epra last year to assess why the revoked regulations had failed and offer a way forward.
“It was practically not possible to operationalise and monitor as installation of solar water heaters is not tantamount to the use of hot water, neither is the number of bedrooms in a house a reflection of the amount of cold or hot water used in the house,” said the researchers.
