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Key findings: D0401.7 - Natural Capital 7: Physical Energy Flow Accounts for South Africa, 2022

This document is published as a discussion document in the Natural Capital series and extends the time series of the PEFA for South Africa, which was first released in March 2025 for the period 2015 to 2021, to include the reference year 2022. The purpose of a discussion document is to present experimental accounts that are not official statistics, and to invite comments on these accounts. The statistics from the PEFA for South Africa, 2022, add to the richness of evidence available to decision-and policy-makers. It further contributes to the implementation of South Africa’s National NCA Strategy, that Stats SA published in June 2021. 
  • ‘Natural resource inputs’ for the supply of energy in South Africa decreased by 1,8% from 6 545,1 PJ in 2021 to 6 424,1 PJ in 2022, and ‘inputs of energy from renewable sources’ increased by 3,1% from 91,6 PJ in 2021 to 94,4 PJ in 2022. 
  • The energy product ‘coal’ was still the largest domestically produced energy product for South Africa in 2022, even though domestic production decreased by 1,7% between 2021 (5 620,0 PJ) and 2022 (5 526,4 PJ).
  • ‘Oil and oil products’ constituted 84,8% of all energy products imported to South Africa in 2022, followed by ‘natural gas’ (10,2%).
  • For all industries in South Africa in 2022, ‘coal’ was the largest energy product directly used as part of the production process (and to produce goods and services that are not energy products), followed by ‘electricity’ and ‘oil and oil products’.
  • The ‘manufacturing’ industry was the largest end-user of all energy products, to produce goods and services that are not energy products in 2022 (53,6% of all end-use of energy products by industry). The second largest end-user of energy products in 2022 was the ‘transportation and storage’ industry.
  • The main energy product used by households for their own end-use in 2022, was ‘biofuels’, followed by ‘oil and oil products’ and ‘electricity’.
  • South Africa mainly exported the energy product ‘coal’ to the rest of the world in 2022 (90,4% of total exports of energy products).
Except for the ‘transportation and storage’ industry, all the industries had higher energy intensities in 2022 compared with 2021, an indication that the majority of industries used energy less efficiently during the year. South Africa had a total energy dependency ratio in 2022 of 19,9%, which was an increase from the total energy dependency ratio of 18,3% in 2021. Household energy use per capita for South Africa was 12,0 GJ per person in 2022, which was a decrease from the 12,1 GJ per person in 2021, and the 13,2 GJ per person in 2020.

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