{"id":82781,"date":"2022-05-24T11:27:29","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T11:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theoutlier.co.za\/?p=82781"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:43:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:43:23","slug":"sa-is-the-biggest-wind-and-solar-producer-in-africa-but-most-of-our-energy-still-comes-from-coal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2022\/05\/24\/sa-is-the-biggest-wind-and-solar-producer-in-africa-but-most-of-our-energy-still-comes-from-coal\/","title":{"rendered":"SA is the biggest wind and solar producer in Africa, but most of its energy still comes from coal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>South Africa produces the most solar and wind energy by terawatt-hours (TWh) in Africa, according to Ember, a global energy think tank. But renewable energy is only a tiny proportion of our energy mix. Only 2% comes from solar and 3% from wind in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-600-wide size\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/editor.mediahack.co.za\/theoutlier\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/05\/2.0-SA-energy-mix_for_web-600x600.png\" alt=\"South Africa's energy mix\" class=\"wp-image-82787\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The 147MW Roggeveld wind farm, which was officially launched last Saturday, will add enough power to the Eskom grid to supply&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/roggeveldwindfarm.energy\/\">49,200 households<\/a>&nbsp;in the Northern and Western Cape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/_sawea\/status\/1528681602490015744\">Thirty-three wind farms<\/a>&nbsp;are either fully operational or under construction, according to data from the South African Wind Energy Association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nevertheless, other African countries \u2013 with far less solar and wind capacity \u2013 have a higher proportion of renewables in their energy mix than South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Wind power<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Fifteen countries in Africa generate electricity from wind, according to&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/ember-climate.org\/about\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ember\u2019s latest global energy report<\/a>, and the four countries generating the most wind power by terawatt-hours in 2021 were:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>South Africa (8TWh)<\/li><li>Morocco (5TWh)<\/li><li>Egypt (4TWh)<\/li><li>Kenya (2TWh)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Kenya has the biggest wind farm in Africa at Lake Turkana with 365 wind turbines, and its wind power generation had increased to 16% of its energy mix by 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-600-wide size\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/editor.mediahack.co.za\/theoutlier\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/05\/wind-2.0_web-600x600.png\" alt=\"Kenyan wind power takes off\" class=\"wp-image-82786\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>But Kenya isn\u2019t the only country where wind power suppliers over a tenth of its power. Wind power makes up 12% of Morocco\u2019s energy mix. It\u2019s also 17% of Cabo Verde&#8217;s, but the islands only produce 0.08 TWh of wind power for its population of 555,988.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Solar power<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>More than double the number of countries that produce wind power in Africa generate solar power (38 countries), with the largest solar power producers in terawatt-hours being South Africa (4.55 TWh) and Egypt (1.64 TWh).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But solar power makes up only 2% of South Africa\u2019s energy mix and 1% of Egypt\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The countries with the biggest proportion of solar power in their energy mix are Senegal (6%) and Burundi (3%). They produce 0.36 TWh and 0.01 TWh respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Biggest power produces in Africa<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Of the 54 countries in Africa, only 15 produce more than 10 TWh of electricity per year. The five African countries that produce the most power a year are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>South Africa (229.72 TWh)<\/li><li>Egypt (187.84 TWh)<\/li><li>Algeria (76.63 TWh)<\/li><li>Morocco (37.01 TWh)<\/li><li>Libya (31.7 TWh)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>But these five countries rely heavily on fossil fuels in their energy mixes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>84% of South Africa\u2019s electricity and 59% of Morocco\u2019s energy mix is dependent on coal. 76% of Egypt\u2019s energy mix, 99% of Algeria\u2019s and 70% of Libya\u2019s power is dependent on gas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Data<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Research and data from think tank Ember&#8217;s 2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/ember-climate.org\/about\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Global Energy Report.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While other African countries are taking greater strides compared to South Africa to rely on renewable power even with new renewable plants opening up in SA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12,446,1387],"tags":[131,132,38,133,134,40,135],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-82781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","category-environment","category-news","category-the-outlier","tag-egypt","tag-kenya","tag-morocco","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar-power","tag-south-africa","tag-wind-power"],"acf":{"big_number":null,"big_number_caption":null,"big_number_link":null,"big_number_background":null,"big_number_text_colour":null,"big_number_icon":null,"big_number_wide":null,"featured_chart":null,"flourish_chart_id":null,"flourish_sub_title":null,"flourish_chart_width":null,"is_newsletter_post":null,"post_style":null,"show_on_front":null,"link_through":null,"chart_url":null,"background_colour":null,"text_colour":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86619,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82781\/revisions\/86619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82781"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=82781"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=82781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}