For most of the past two decades, running a big business in South Africa meant living with Eskom's blackouts and its ever-climbing bills. Now a growing number of the country's largest companies have decided they would rather generate their own power. At least 40 listed firms — spanning mining, property, retail and healthcare — have shared plans this year to lean on renewables and cut their dependence on the state utility, according to data pulled together by Bloomberg.
From monopoly to open market
The mood shift is captured neatly by Andre Nepgen, who runs Discovery Green, a power-trading platform the insurer Discovery set up in 2023. "We had 102 years of a monopoly responsible for energy and now it's a liberalised market where businesses can choose where they get their energy from," he says. Take Impala Platinum, the world's second-biggest producer of the metal: in 2024 it began buying clean electricity through Discovery Green, and its sustainability executive Tsakani Mthombeni says supply constraints are a direct risk to safety and production, with reliability "non-negotiable."
The maths that's driving it
The economics are hard to argue with. Eskom's prices have climbed almost 900% since 2008, and it still carries R358 billion of long-term debt. Richard Doyle, who runs the solar and wind builder JUWI South Africa, says grid power now costs more than R2 a unit against 50 to 60 cents for solar — "a complete commercial no-brainer," in his words. The scale of the swing is visible in the numbers: South Africa now has 19,677 megawatts of renewable capacity registered with the energy regulator, up from under 20 megawatts in 2018. Beyond those registered projects, the national transmission company estimates there are about 8,400 megawatts of private solar installed on-site at homes and businesses. Eskom's own fleet, by comparison, totals about 53,200 megawatts, still 85% coal.
Eskom itself calls the trend a "death spiral" — the more customers leave, the more it must raise prices, which pushes still more customers away. Its answer is a new arm, Eskom Green, targeting 6,000 megawatts of renewables by the end of the decade. Whether that is enough to hold on to its biggest customers is the open question.
