By Daniel Wallis

NAIROBI, March 23 (Reuters) - As the world tries to climate-proof everything from cars to factories, your cup of tea may be about to become a bit more environmentally friendly.

A U.N. project being launched in Kenya will help about a dozen tea plantations build mini-hydropower dams to cut their energy costs, and maybe even export clean electricity to the national grid or rural electrification schemes.

"Tea production needs lots of water, so most of these sites are located near good sources," Catherine Vallee, a senior U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) official, told Reuters on Friday.

"Many are suitable for small hydropower projects and some have potential to produce more electricity than they can use."

Under the scheme, which is backed by the African Development Bank, that excess production would be fed to the national grid.

European Union funds also are being used to see if it could independently power neighbouring villages in remote communities with some of the lowest electricity access rates in the world.

The project eventually will be rolled out in several African countries: Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. But it is starting in Kenya, which is among the world's top three black tea producers with India and Sri Lanka.

Kenya earned just over $670 million last year from tea exports -- the country's top source of hard currency -- and its farmers often complain about unreliable electricity supply.

UNEP will give about $3.4 million to the plan, which it hopes will draw a further $25 million from bilateral donors, financial institutions, governments and the tea producers themselves.

Work on the mini-hydropower projects, each churning out one or two megawatts of clean energy, will begin within a year.

Power accounts for about a quarter of tea growers' costs and production requires a stable energy supply. Power cuts lead to lower quality, experts say, and reliable but costly diesel back-up generators are only available to the bigger companies.

"The others often go out of business," Vallee said. "The aim of this project is to help them access clean, renewable power."

Pakistan is Kenya's top buyer, taking about a third of its tea exports, followed by Egypt, Britain, Afghanistan and Sudan.

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