Lamu Spaceport Liquid Oxygen Plant

The Lamu Spaceport Liquid Oxygen Plant is a project within the Industry theme. It is a proposal from the Pwani 2050 plan to produce liquid oxygen, the larger part of a modern rocket’s propellant, for the proposed Lamu Spaceport, using an air separation plant powered by solar energy, with methane for the same rockets imported as liquefied natural gas. The idea is set out in a concept note by Jay Shapiro, “Fuelling Lamu: Why Kenya is Uniquely Ready to Be the Next Spaceport” (June 2025), which argues that the coast can fuel heavy launches as well as host them. This page sets the note’s figures beside other published figures. The largest difference concerns the energy needed: the note’s estimate covers separating oxygen from air, and turning that oxygen into liquid adds substantially to the power required.

What it is

Rockets such as SpaceX’s Starship burn liquid methane with liquid oxygen (LOX). The concept note sizes a plant for a Starship-class operation launching once a day, about 300 launches a year. It proposes a cryogenic air separation plant, modelled on the one Linde built to supply SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas, powered by a 120 MWp solar farm with battery storage in Garissa County, with the LOX trucked to the launch site along the LAPSSET highway. Desalinated seawater would supply the plant, with surplus water for nearby residents. Methane would be imported as LNG, through Lamu port or through Mombasa, where the new offshore Kipevu Oil Terminal II already handles crude, refined fuels and liquefied petroleum gas.

The table sets the note’s main figures beside other published figures. Figures marked “derived” are calculated on this page from the cited inputs.

Kenya’s grid is widely described as more than 90 per cent renewable, a level first reported in 2019; the regulator’s figures for recent years are lower, about 81 to 85 per cent, as drought cut hydropower and imports rose. The 200 kWh figure in the note is in line with published values for separating oxygen as a gas; producing liquid oxygen also requires liquefaction, which one published estimate puts at a further 525 kWh per tonne. On those figures the solar farm would need to be larger than the note’s 120 MWp, roughly 700 to 950 MWp with more storage if the plant were run wholly on its own solar power, or the plant could draw part of its load from the grid (derived; the existing Garissa plant uses about 81 hectares for 50 MW).¹⁰

Rationale

The note’s case is that Kenya can fuel launches as well as host them, and that this is a competitive advantage. It points to Linde’s long presence in Kenya through BOC Kenya, founded in Mombasa in 1940 and part of the Linde Group;¹¹ to Kenya’s largely renewable grid; to cheap solar power in the north-east; and to Lamu’s deep-water port for LNG imports. The government’s own energy plan supports part of this picture: the draft National Energy Compact aims to move the grid from 83 per cent to 100 per cent clean sources by 2030, using LNG “as a transition fuel”.¹²

The note’s reference model is the air separation plant Linde built near SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas. That plant sits close to the launch site it serves, rather than hundreds of kilometres away, which is the main way the model differs from the concept.

Status and timeline

The plant exists only as a concept. The spaceport it would serve is at the feasibility stage. The National Treasury’s Terms of Reference for a transaction adviser, issued in December 2025, place the spaceport “in the general area of Kipini, between Malindi and Lamu”, which is in Tana River County.¹³ The Terms of Reference mention solid and liquid propellant launch vehicles including sounding rockets, which suggests smaller launchers than Starship. Space in Africa reported in October 2026 that the PPP Directorate and the Kenya Space Agency had signed a funding agreement to onboard the transaction adviser; no launch operator has been named.¹⁴

BOC Kenya says its immediate majority shareholder is BOC Holdings of the United Kingdom, part of the Linde Group, and lists operations in Mombasa, Nairobi, Kisumu and neighbouring countries; it gives no oxygen production capacity. Its operations are far smaller than the proposed plant.

How the project would be procured

There is no Terms of Reference, feasibility study or budget for a propellant plant. Propellant supply would normally be settled between the spaceport operator, its launch customers and an industrial gas company, and could be folded into the spaceport public private partnership that the transaction adviser is now preparing.

Who is involved

The concept comes from the Pwani 2050 plan. The Kenya Space Agency and the National Treasury’s PPP Directorate lead the spaceport. Linde, through BOC Kenya, is the obvious industrial gas partner but has made no statement about the idea. The Ministry of Energy and Petroleum sets LNG policy.

• Kenya Space Agency
• BOC Kenya

Concerns and counterpoints

No one has commented in public on this proposal. The points below come from the official record and from coverage of the places and industries it depends on.

Scale and power

Including liquefaction, the power need of roughly 120 to 157 MW is comparable to a large geothermal plant, for a single customer. A plant that size would compete with the rest of the grid for clean power, and the grid’s renewable share is itself partly imported: Kenya bought 1,274 GWh from Ethiopia in 2024/25. Daily Starship launches from Kenya are an assumption with no operator behind it; the conference paper the note relies on argues for an equatorial spaceport in general and does not show any launch company’s commitment.¹⁵

Transport and safety

At about 20 to 25 tonnes per road tanker, about 4,100 tonnes of LOX a day would mean roughly 165 to 205 tanker loads every day (derived). LOX is a strong oxidiser, and bulk volumes are normally made close to where they are used. The road from Garissa to Lamu is largely unbuilt: about 88 km of the first 410 km section was complete in October 2025,¹⁶ and the Auditor-General found the Lamu to Garissa to Isiolo highway “either not completed or is yet to start”, with al-Shabaab attacks on road crews disrupting work.¹⁷ Siting the plant beside the launch site, as at Starbase, would avoid the haul but move the solar farm’s power onto the grid.

Land and communities in Garissa

Residents of Raya, beside the existing Garissa solar plant, protested in November 2025 that they had been pressured into giving up land, that 376 landowners hosting power lines had not been compensated, and that promised schools, a dispensary, jobs and electricity had not arrived; the report carried no government response.¹⁸ A solar farm many times larger would fall on pastoral community land.

Water and methane

A plant of this size needs cooling water, so it would depend on new desalination on a dry coast, which adds its own power demand. On methane, Kipevu Oil Terminal II gives Mombasa a modern offshore berth for large tankers, but it does not yet handle LNG, and no long-term LNG supply contract for Kenya has been published. Kenya’s current LNG plan is a 1,200 MW power station at Dongo Kundu with no gas supply yet secured. Using imported fossil methane also weakens the concept’s claim to be a clean, renewable-powered operation.

Sources

• Kenya National Energy Compact 2025-2030 (draft), Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, July 2025.
• Terms of Reference for the commercial spaceport, Kenya Space Agency and National Treasury, December 2025.
• Case Study for Public Private Partnership to Establish an Equatorial Spaceport, Ndiritu and Hayes, 2024.
• Jay Shapiro, “Fuelling Lamu: Why Kenya is Uniquely Ready to Be the Next Spaceport”, concept note, June 2025 (unpublished).
• Air Separation Units, Gerhard Beysel, Linde AG, 2009.