Eskom is getting replaced
Eskom’s contribution to South Africa’s electricity supply is estimated to have dropped to roughly 81% last year. About a fifth of the country’s power comes from other sources, likely private generation.
South Africa lost its title as the continent’s top electricity producer in 2025, primarily due to a steep decline in coal-based power generation.
The Outlier recently analysed data from energy intelligence firm Ember Energy, which showed that Egypt overtook South Africa as the continent’s largest electricity producer last year.
Over the last decade, Egypt’s annual gross electricity generation grew by 35%, from 181.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) to 245.7TWh.
Over the same period, South Africa’s gross electricity generation dropped 2.9% from 250.1TWh to 242.8TWh.
Ember’s data showed that Egypt’s growth was driven almost entirely by fossil fuel–based generation, mostly gas power.
Renewables increased its share of the power mix from 8% to 12%, with the Aswan Dam carrying most of that load.
In contrast, South Africa’s fossil fuel-based electricity generation, which consists primarily of coal-fired power stations, plunged by 29.8TWh.
However, significant uptake of renewables almost offset the decline. In 2025, renewable generation produced 33TWh of electricity, up 408% from 2015.
The contribution of renewables to Eskom’s electricity mix also increased from 2.6% to 13.6%. Renewable power has displaced coal, rather than meeting new demand.
Despite the decline in coal-based generation, South Africa still relies more on it than almost any other country in the world.
Coal accounted for 81% of South Africa’s electricity generation, the most of any country except Mongolia, where coal contributed 86%.
South Africa also had the seventh-highest per capita coal generation of 3,050kWh per citizen. Almost all of the coal power capacity comes from Eskom.
It should be noted that Ember Energy’s data included gross energy generation across Eskom, municipalities, and private power producers.
While the 2.9% decline in gross generation is worrying, Eskom has even greater cause for concern, as its contribution to the energy mix has shrunk substantially.
Private power saves South Africa from major decline
In 2015, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research said that 95% of gross electricity generation came from Eskom. At that stage, its own gross generation was about 230TWh.
By 2024, its contribution to the power mix had plummeted to 86%. In 2025, it sent out 190.81TWh of energy, which excludes the energy used by its own power stations.
While Eskom has yet to disclose its gross generation for the year, the figure should be 195.5–196.5TWh, based on internal power usage typically accounting for about 4.5% to 5% of total generation.
Based on Ember’s estimated total of 242.8TWh across all energy sources, Eskom’s contribution to total generation should be around 80.6%.
Eskom’s gross generation has therefore dropped by about 35TWh, greater than the coal power reduction.
Therefore, the country used less Eskom-generated electricity from non-coal sources, and the increase in renewable power primarily came from private energy generators.
Therefore, Ember’s data showed that the decline in load-shedding could not be attributed solely to a reduction in energy demand.
Other electricity generators increased their share of the supply from about 5% to 19.4% in the last 10 years.
Most municipalities do not have their own power generation, meaning most of the growth came from the private sector.
Over the last decade, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has registered 19,300MW of private power generation, primarily solar and wind.
In addition, an estimated 7,300MW of solar power has been installed in smaller “behind-the-meter” installations.
The surge was driven by businesses and households seeking alternatives to protect themselves from Eskom’s deteriorating coal fleet, which frequently plunged the country into load-shedding.
While Eskom’s energy availability factor has improved by roughly 10 percentage points over the last two years, it is still well below the standards of leading power utilities worldwide.
Without the contribution of private power, which took significant strain off the grid, the suspension of load-shedding would not have happened.
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