Cape Town’s State of Energy and Carbon
Like all cities, energy powers Cape Town’s economy and impacts the quality of life of its residents. Insight into our energy use and greenhouse gas emissions as a city enables us to assess and plan for the energy future we want to build.
About
We published our
first State of Energy Report in 2003, and a new edition has been published every five years since then. The publication’s title was changed to State of Energy and Carbon (SOEC) in the
2021 edition in light of our commitment to decarbonise.
The report provides a data-rich overview of Cape Town’s energy system, linking it to an overview of greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting. The GHG accounting process presents an opportunity to explore the connections between systems across the City, including:
- water
- wastewater
- solid waste
- transport
- green spaces
- agriculture
With energy in the foreground, this systems-view draws on a wide range of national, provincial, industry and municipal sources to provide a useful and comprehensive resource for policy-making, research and planning.
Since the approval of our
2050 Energy Strategy, which outlines a vision of
energy security for a prosperous Cape Town, monitoring the changing energy landscape is essential to managing our progress towards this commitment.
State of Energy and Carbon, 2025
The data reporting covers the period from 2014 – 2023, but analysis draws on older data where relevant. There is particular emphasis on the period from 2019 to 2023 due to significant disruption during this time, including the Covid-19 pandemic and an escalation of national load-shedding.
The supplemental report to the main report focuses specifically on using the data collected and analysed to assess baseline progress towards the vision of the recent
City of Cape Town 2050 Energy Strategy.
Access the SOEC 2025 documents:
report data
You can also visit our
Open Data Portal to access and download the data used to develop the 2025 report.
Access past reports
The full data sets and detailed supporting metadata from the reports is also publicly available on the City’s
Open Data Portal to make deployment of the data quicker and easier.
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