From scraps to solutions: How biogas could transform South Africa’s energy future
Authors: Carlyn Frittelli Davies, Sonam Mansingh and France Richia – ENS
On 19 May 2026, the Natural Resources and Environment team visited Madam Waste, a company that is quietly rewriting the rules of waste and energy in South Africa. What we encountered was not just a business, but a vision: one where yesterday’s food scraps become tomorrow’s fuel, and where the circular economy is not a buzzword but a lived reality. Madam Waste adopts a consumer-centric and tailored approach to each service, spanning urban planning, organic waste management and decentralised sustainable energy.
This article explores the position of biogas within South Africa’s waste and energy regulatory landscape: why it matters, how it works, and what it could mean for communities, the climate, and the economy if we choose to scale it.
A country in need of an energy solution
South Africa stands at a crossroads. Over 70% of South Africa’s primary energy is derived from coal and about 90% of electricity generation is coal-based, a model that is neither sustainable nor sufficient. Electricity demand is projected to climb sharply, yet supply cannot keep pace, and low-income communities, already on the periphery of urban areas, bear the heaviest burden.
The cost of that burden is growing by the year. In March 2026, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (“NERSA”) approved an electricity tariff increase of 8.76% for Eskom direct customers and 9.01% for municipal distributors, effective from April and July 2026 respectively. A further increase of 8.83% has already been pencilled in for 2027/28. Since 2000, Eskom tariffs have increased by over 1500%, far outstripping inflation, meaning that a household paying R500 per month in 2000 would now face a bill of approximately R8000 for the same usage. For restaurants, food manufacturers and other energy-intensive businesses, these escalations are existential.
Meanwhile, waste piles up. South Africa is one of the continent’s largest waste producers, and the vast majority of that waste ends up in landfills, facilities that are running out of space and becoming costlier to maintain.
Outside of Cape Town, which has invested in organic waste separation infrastructure, most municipalities across the country still send organic waste to ordinary landfills, with no diversion or recovery strategy in place. This is waste that could be feeding biodigesters, but instead it decomposes in open sites, releasing methane uncontrolled into the atmosphere and consuming valuable landfill airspace. We are at the intersection of energy poverty, mounting waste and constrained municipal budgets, but within this crisis lies a remarkable opportunity.
Biogas: Turning waste into wonder
Biogas is a mixture of gases, primarily methane and carbon dioxide, produced when organic matter decomposes in the absence of oxygen through a process called anaerobic digestion. This is not some futuristic fantasy; it is a natural process that occurs in our own digestive systems and in the depths of wetlands. The genius lies in engineering that process intentionally, using biodigesters, which are airtight systems that provide the optimal environment for controlled anaerobic digestion.
The feedstock is all around us: Agricultural residues, animal manure, food waste from restaurants and canteens and fruit and vegetable scraps from markets. That banana peel tossed in the bin, the kitchen waste from a busy Johannesburg restaurant, the manure from a Free State dairy farm, all of it can be transformed into sustainable, usable energy.
One cubic metre of biogas can cook three meals, produce six to seven hours of light from a 60-watt bulb, or generate 1.25 kilowatts of electricity. For a country where thousands still rely on wood, coal and paraffin for cooking and heating, those numbers are not just impressive, they are life-changing.
More than energy: A recipe for socio-economic revival
The beauty of biogas lies in its multiplier effect. It does not merely produce energy; it produces opportunity.
The South African biogas industry already employs approximately 1 700 people, but conservative estimates forecast this figure rising to 59 000 full-time equivalent jobs by 2030, with more optimistic projections reaching 88 000. These are jobs at every skill level, from plant construction and maintenance to feedstock collection and fertiliser distribution, and they can be located in both rural and urban areas.
This matters profoundly for the country’s young people. In the first quarter of 2026, Statistics South Africa recorded a youth unemployment rate of 45.8% among those aged 15 to 34, with 4.7 million young South Africans without work. Among those aged 15 to 24, the figure climbs to a staggering 60.9%.
As South Africa marks Youth Day on 16 June, it is worth asking what real economic participation looks like for the next generation. Biogas offers a tangible answer: an industry that requires hands-on skills in construction, operations, maintenance, feedstock logistics and fertiliser production, roles that can absorb young workers at scale and across skill levels, including in the very rural and peri-urban communities where unemployment bites hardest.
Biogas is a clean cooking fuel that displaces the need for wood or coal-burning stoves, reducing household air pollution and preventing respiratory illnesses that disproportionately affect women and children in low-income households. It also frees up time previously spent collecting firewood, time that can be invested in education, enterprise and family.
The process does not end with gas. The by-product of anaerobic digestion, called digestate, is a high-quality organic fertiliser rich in nutrients. For a country with established organic farming practices, this creates a symbiotic relationship between energy generation and food production, reducing the need for expensive synthetic fertilisers and building healthier soils.
Biogas substitutes fossil fuels and prevents methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide, from escaping uncontrolled into the atmosphere. South Africa’s bioenergy potential from domestic and commercial waste alone is estimated at approximately 1 400 megawatts of electricity, which could reduce millions of tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emissions annually.
From restaurants to rural homesteads
Imagine a restaurant in Sandton that separates its food waste, sends it to a local biodigester, and in return receives affordable gas for its kitchen stoves. Now imagine a rural homestead in Limpopo, where a small domestic digester, fuelled by cow dung and kitchen scraps, provides enough gas for the family to cook all three daily meals without chopping a single tree. Biowaste from hotels and restaurants has been identified as having huge potential as feedstock for biogas plants. Small-scale domestic digesters, with a reactor volume below 50 cubic metres, can generate biogas for cooking, lighting and heating water at household level. This is energy independence, built from the bottom up.
South Africa already has the foundations: biogas technology in the country dates back to 1957, when John Fry installed the first biogas digester on a pig farm. Today, there are approximately 500 digesters installed across the country. Projects such as the Bronkhorstspruit biogas plant, a R150 million facility that supplies roughly 25 to 30 per cent of BMW Rosslyn’s electricity demand, demonstrate what is possible at scale.
Where does biogas sit in law and policy?
For all its promise, biogas occupies an awkward position in South Africa’s regulatory framework. There is no single, dedicated statute governing its development. Instead, biogas projects must navigate a patchwork of legislation spanning waste management, energy regulation and environmental compliance.
The National Environmental Management: Waste Act 59 of 2008 (the “NEMWA”) provides the overarching framework for waste treatment and disposal, and encourages waste diversion from landfill, creating a favourable policy environment for biogas as a waste-processing technology. The White Paper on Renewable Energy of 2003 set targets for renewable energy generation, and the Integrated Resource Plan acknowledges biogas and landfill gas as part of the energy mix, albeit without the dedicated allocations that solar and wind have received. Regulation of biogas is mainly governed by Section 28 of the Gas Act of 2001, but it focuses primarily on small biogas projects.
Establishing a commercial biogas plant requires navigating several concurrent approval processes: an Environmental Impact Assessment (which can take up to eighteen months), a waste management licence from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, a water use licence from the Department of Water and Sanitation, municipal consent-of-use licensing (which can take up to two years), and registration with NERSA for electricity generation. A 2015 study by the German Development Cooperation Agency found that various interrelated approvals under numerous Acts have different requirements, processes and time frames, with discrepancies between definitions and interpretations across provincial and national departments.
Despite the complexity, there are policy tailwinds. South Africa’s commitment under the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions supports the case for biogas as a carbon-neutral energy source. The introduction of a carbon tax in 2019 may further improve the financial case for biogas plants that can demonstrate emission reductions. And the growing recognition of small-scale embedded generation, projects under one megawatt that can sell excess energy back into the municipal grid, is opening doors for decentralised biogas installations. What is urgently needed, however, is a dedicated national biogas strategy that streamlines the licensing process, provides targeted financial incentives, and positions biogas not as an afterthought in the renewable energy conversation, but as a central pillar of South Africa’s circular economy.
The road ahead
Of course, challenges remain. Limited grants and public sector incentives, a lack of local technology providers, lengthy environmental impact assessment processes and a banking sector that still perceives biogas projects as high-risk investments, all slow progress. But these are barriers of policy and perception, not of possibility.
As Madam Waste reminds us, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 7 which focuses on affordable and clean energy, Goal 11 which promotes sustainable cities and communities, and Goal 12 which advances responsible consumption and production, are not abstract ideals but clear frameworks for action. Biodigester projects have been shown to contribute directly to 14 of the 17 SDGs.
South Africa does not need to look far for solutions. The answer is sitting in our bins, our farms, our kitchens and our sewage works. It is decomposing quietly, waiting for us to harness it. Biogas is not merely an alternative energy source; it is a gateway to a circular economy, one where waste feeds energy, energy feeds industry, and industry feeds communities.
As the African proverb goes, “If you wish to move mountains tomorrow, you must start by lifting stones today.”
Let us start lifting.
This article was first published by ENS (www.ENSafrica.com) on 23 June 2026.
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