South Africa Energy Made Visual
Visualisation of South Africa's energy sector data. This resource forms part of the South African Platform for Energy Modelling
1. South Africa’s Energy Balance: A Visual Overview
This diagram visualizes South Africa’s 2017 energy balance, highlighting the country's overwhelming reliance on coal extraction as the primary energy source for electricity generation, synthetic fuels, and exports.
2. South Africa's Energy Mix
This treemap breaks down the 2,300 Petajoules (PJ) of energy used by South African consumers, categorized by fuel type. This diagram reveals that while South Africa's conversation often focuses on electricity, over 60% of the country's end-use energy needs are met by burning fuels directly (diesel, petrol, coal, gas) rather than by drawing power from the grid. This highlights the challenge of decarbonization: it requires not just greening the electricity grid, but also electrifying the massive transport and industrial heating sectors.
"Final energy use" refers to the energy consumed by end-users, such as households, factories, and vehicles, at the final point of service. It represents the energy that actually reaches the consumer's meter or fuel tank.
3. Who Consumes South Africa's Power?
This chart illustrates the sectoral breakdown of South Africa’s 2019 electricity consumption, which totaled 209 TWh. It identifies Industry as the dominant consumer (43%), driven by specific sub-sectors like mining and ferro-alloys,.
4. Industrial Sector Energy Balance
This Sankey diagram details the energy flows within South Africa's industrial sector for the 2017 base year, tracking inputs from the national grid and raw fuel extraction to specific sub-sectors like Mining, Iron & Steel, and Chemicals. It highlights the sector's bifurcation: coal is the dominant source for process heating (the large green flows on the right), particularly in heavy manufacturing, while electricity primarily drives motive power applications such as pumps, fans, and compressors.
5. South Africa's oil and gas supply
This diagram maps the unique structure of South Africa’s liquid fuel supply, which is derived from both imported crude oil and domestic coal via Coal-to-Liquid (CTL) refineries. In recent years, there has been a shift away from domestic refining of imported crude, to importing refined product. The transport sector is the overwhelming primary consumer of these liquid fuels, absorbing the vast majority of the country's refinery output.
