Safaricom fuel consumption hits 11.6m liters due to blackouts

Fuel consumption by Safaricom, Kenya’s leading telecommunications company, jumped by 16.1% in 2023 to hit 11.65 million liters in its financial year to March 2024, making the company one of the largest fuel users in the country.

Safaricom partly attributed the increase in fuel consumption during the year to frequent power outages that hit power customers during the period, forcing it to deploy diesel generators to continue operations.

This marks a second consecutive increase in fuel usage by the telco, whose fuel consumption also grew to 10.03 million liters in 2022 up from 8.83 million liters in the previous year, according to the company’s 2024 Sustainable Business Report that was launched on Thursday.

The report covers Safaricom’s operations from April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024, a period during which its carbon emissions grew by 6% to 45,804.75tCO2e.

Fuel is a major energy source in Kenya, and is primarily used for transport, manufacturing, power generation, agriculture, cooking and to power machinery and euqipment.

“Our reliance on diesel generators increased from 0.7% to 9% due to power cuts and grid availability constraints. The rise in diesel consumption underscores the ongoing challenges we face in maintaining consistent power supply,” said Safaricom.

Safaricom uses the fuel to power thousands of its network sites across the country and also its fleet of vehicles. Most of safaricom’s network sites are connected to the national power grid but have backup generators that kick in when there is an outage. Some off-grid network sites however exclusively rely on diesel generators to operate.

The company is however fixing some of its network sites with solar to cut its carbon footprint and reduce long-term energy costs. The telco says that it has already solarized 1,432 network sites and plans to solarize a further 3,000 sites over the next one and a half years.

“We will continue to invest in clean energy, aiming to power all our transmitter stations with solar and expand our use of renewable energy across the business,” said Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa.

Safaricom attributed the increase in its overall emissions during the year to infrastructure expansion, delayed solarization of some of its network sites and an increase in electricity outages that necessitated diesel generators to run for longer hours.

The company targets to reduce its carbon footprint by 74% to just 14,676tCO2e in 2050.

Sustainability reporting has become a major issue not only in Kenya but also globally. Companies listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) are required to report their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) impact of their operations as part of measures to reduce their carbon footprint.

The focus on ESG is rapidly rising in Kenya as major institutional investors demand greater ESG commitment from the companies in which they invest in.

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