The Electricity Generating Company (Egenco) has announced plans to construct a 250 megawatts (MW) coal-fired power plant, as revealed by Egenco spokesperson Moses Gwaza.

The development aims to improve the power supply in Malawi, adding on to other efforts that the firm has implemented over the past months. Gwaza revealed that the first phase of the plant was to research on how much coal is available currently, against how much will be needed for the project. “The study will help us know how much coal is available, the quality of the coal and the calorific values. So after the study is finalised, we will know where the power plant can be located, how much it will cost us and how long the project will take to complete,” he said.

Coal is a good initiative for electricity, but on a large scale,  damages the environment because of the high volumes of carbon emitted in the earth’s atmosphere. Justifying the resolve, Gwaza said that the current hydro-electricity initiative has not been effective as expected. Last weekend, Escom announced of a load shedding program that will run from the 13th of July to 15th July on Monday. According to a notice by Management, the load shedding schedule will be in unison with maintenance works of the power station that has not been named. “Egenco is carrying out maintenance works at one of its power stations” says the notice.