Kibet, Joy Jepng'etich2025-07-112025-07-112023-01-31https://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/30356Supervisors: 1. Sammy LetemaTea sector is an important contributor to Kenya's economy since it is a major contributor to foreign exchange via export, which contributes significantly to gross domestic products. An extensive amount of energy is required to produce one kg of tea making tea production and processing energy intensive. Increased energy demand in the tea sector in turn increases the emission of greenhouse gases and environmental impacts arising from the energy use. Despite tea factories having access to renewable sources of energy, non-renewable sources like firewood are still consumed largely. Tea factories don't have enough evidence on which energy type to utilize in order to reduce GHG emissions and environmental impacts and ensure energy sustainability. Research on the comparison of different energy use, emission, and environmental impacts has not yet been done, which is the focus of the study. Therefore, it is imperative to compare different energy sources and their environmental impacts so as to find a sustainable energy source for the tea sector in Kenya, which in this study are fuel wood, solar, briquettes and biogas. The objectives of the research are to assess energy use between 2016 to 2020, determine amount of greenhouse gas emissions, and to compare environmental impacts of energy use by the four tea factories using different energy sources in Kenya. The tea factories involved in the study are Kagwe in Kiambu County, Makomboki Murang'a County, Chemogondany in Kericho County and Kitumbe in Bomet County. The study utilized descriptive- comparative research design to analyse the survey interviews data and records obtained from the tea factories. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emission factor is used to calculate the total emissions of each type of energy used for 5 years. Life cycle assessment using simapro software is used to assess the specific compound causing the emission. Purposive sampling was used in selecting the four tea factories and the key informants. Primary data was derived from interviewing key informants. Secondary data was obtained from the tea factories records and reports. Life cycle assessment was done using Simapro 7.3 as the software tool and Eco-indicator 99 as the assessment method. The finding reveals that there is an increased demand of energy in tea factories in Kenya as shown by a 5-year energy consumption trend; which implies that more emissions and environmental impacts is experienced. The greenhouse gas emission from wood consumption for a period of 5 years is 0.104771 scores of total environmental load while solar energy has a total score of 2.77E-07 scores. This implies that wood energy produces more emissions compared to electricity, solar, and briquettes; with solar having the least emissions of all. Life cycle assessment model shows that wood has more impact compared to other three types of energy assessed with a total value of 13996.23 score impact categories. The government should give clear guidelines on the regulation on the type of energy to be used in the tea factories. Additionally, sensitization by the respective government bodies on the use of the by products from the tea processing should be a considered.enThesis