A 1 GW Opportunity? Why South Africa’s Bioenergy Potential Remains Trapped

South Africa has spent more than two decades acknowledging bioenergy as part of its renewable-energy, rural-development and climate strategy. However, despite abundant agricultural residues, forestry waste, municipal organic waste and established conversion technologies, bioenergy remains a marginal part of the national energy system.

A new review, "Bioenergy Development in South Africa: Assessing the Gap Between Policy Ambition and Implementation," published in Sustainability by Nkanyiso Mlalazi, Shumani Ramuhaheli and Charles Mbohwa of the University of South Africa, argues that the country's central problem is no longer a shortage of ideas, resources or technology. It is the failure to convert policy intent into commercially scaled projects.

By 2024, South Africa had only about 265 MW of installed bioenergy electricity capacity, less than 0.5% of roughly 60 GW of national installed generation. Solar capacity had already exceeded 8 GW and wind 3 GW, highlighting how far bioenergy has fallen behind other renewables despite repeated policy support.

Policy Has Been Written, But the Delivery Architecture Is Missing

South Africa's bioenergy ambitions are not new. The 2003 White Paper on Renewable Energy set a 10,000 GWh renewable-energy target, while the 2007 Biofuels Industrial Strategy introduced a 2% blending target and sought to build a domestic biofuel industry linked to rural development. Subsequent policies included mandatory blending regulations, renewable-energy procurement, national resource planning and carbon pricing.

The problem is that these policies have rarely been reinforced by sufficiently strong implementation mechanisms. The review identifies fragmented governance, regulatory uncertainty, inadequate financing incentives, procurement structures poorly suited to bioenergy and weak coordination between energy, agriculture, waste, environmental and fiscal authorities.

Bioenergy does not fit neatly into a single policy silo. A viable project may simultaneously depend on municipal waste contracts, agricultural feedstock supply, environmental permits, grid access, tax treatment and long-term power purchasing arrangements. Without coordination across these domains, technically feasible projects can remain commercially unbankable.

The record of South Africa's Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme illustrates the problem. Wind and solar benefited from declining technology costs, shorter construction timelines and lower perceived risks, while biomass and biogas projects faced feedstock uncertainty, scale constraints and procurement rules that often worked against their business models.

Waste and Residues Offer the Strongest Near-Term Opportunity

According to the study, South Africa does not need to rely heavily on food crops to expand bioenergy. The strongest near- and medium-term opportunity lies in second-generation feedstocks such as agricultural residues, forestry by-products, sugarcane bagasse, municipal organic waste, wastewater sludge and livestock manure.

These resources offer two advantages. First, they reduce the risk of direct competition with food production, land and water. Second, they turn existing waste streams into economic inputs, creating the possibility of generating energy while lowering landfill pressure, improving waste management and supporting circular-economy objectives.

The review identifies anaerobic digestion and biomass combustion as commercially mature technologies that could be deployed more quickly. Biomethane, industrial cogeneration and waste-to-energy systems are also promising because they can be integrated into sectors where feedstock already exists, including sugar processing, forestry, agro-industry, municipalities and wastewater treatment.

However, biomass is not as simple to mobilise as sunlight or wind. Residues are often geographically dispersed and seasonal, meaning collection, storage, transport, preprocessing and quality control become major cost factors. The review makes clear that bioenergy expansion will depend on building reliable regional supply chains, not merely installing conversion equipment.

Bioenergy Could Solve More Than an Electricity Problem

The case for bioenergy becomes stronger when it is assessed beyond the narrow metric of grid electricity. South Africa's energy system needs dispatchable power, industrial heat, better waste management, lower methane emissions and new economic opportunities in rural and industrial regions. Bioenergy can potentially serve several of these objectives simultaneously.

The review estimates that agricultural residues, forestry waste and organic waste streams could support several hundred megawatts of generation and, under favourable mobilisation scenarios, potentially more than 1 GW of installed capacity. Yet actual deployment remains far below this technical potential because investment, infrastructure and regulatory barriers continue to dominate.

Industrial applications may offer some of the fastest gains. Sugarcane bagasse and forestry residues are already used for process heat and steam, but opportunities for combined heat and power remain underdeveloped. The sugar industry, in particular, could increase grid-connected cogeneration if commercial and policy conditions improve.

The study also highlights a more unconventional opportunity: combining phytoremediation, mine rehabilitation and bioenergy production. Biomass grown on degraded or mine-affected land could help rehabilitate contaminated landscapes and later be used as an energy feedstock, potentially linking renewable energy, mine closure, ecological restoration and carbon mitigation.

The idea is especially relevant to South Africa because of its extensive mining legacy, but it remains an emerging pathway rather than a ready-made commercial solution. The authors caution that poorly planned biomass cultivation could create new environmental risks, including invasive species, habitat disruption and pressure on ecosystems.

The Next Phase Must Be About Implementation, Not More Ambition

Renewable-energy transitions are shaped as much by institutions and market design as by resource availability. South Africa already has biomass resources, mature technologies and an extensive policy history. What it lacks is a sufficiently coordinated system for transforming those assets into projects that investors can finance and operators can sustain.

The authors call for an integrated national bioenergy implementation framework, stronger institutional coordination, targeted incentives, improved biomass supply chains and greater support for commercially mature waste-derived systems. They also recommend measurable deployment indicators so policymakers can track whether commitments are translating into installed capacity and investment.

For investors and development-finance institutions, the most credible opportunities may lie in projects where feedstock, infrastructure and energy demand already converge. Municipal waste systems, wastewater plants, sugar mills, forestry operations and agro-processing clusters could offer more bankable entry points than stand-alone projects dependent on long-distance biomass supply.

Resource abundance alone does not create a modern bioenergy industry. Countries need stable regulation, procurement systems suited to the technology, infrastructure, credible incentives and institutions capable of coordinating energy, agriculture, waste and industrial policy.

South Africa's bioenergy shortfall is less a story of technological failure than of unfinished implementation. If the country can build the delivery architecture around the resources it already possesses, bioenergy could become a meaningful complement to wind, solar and storage while advancing waste reduction, industrial decarbonisation, rural development and energy security. If it cannot, bioenergy risks remaining what it has been for two decades: a promising strategy that exists mainly on paper.