South Africa's Progress and Recent Impact
Key Insights
High Per Capita Emissions
South Africa's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are rated as "very high," with each person contributing approximately 8.6 tonnes of CO2-equivalent annually. This level of emissions is significantly above the global average and highlights the country's reliance on fossil fuels, particularly coal, for energy production. The historical development of coal-to-liquid fuel technology by Sasol and the expansion of coal mining operations have been major contributors to these high per capita emissions. Despite efforts to diversify the energy mix, coal remains a dominant energy source, driving the high emissions per person.
Declining Emissions Trend
Over the past decade, South Africa has seen a slight decline in its total greenhouse gas emissions, with an annual decrease of about 1.01%. This trend is partly due to the implementation of policies such as the carbon tax in 2019 and the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme (REIPPP) initiated in 2012. These measures have encouraged a shift towards renewable energy sources, gradually reducing the country's dependence on coal. The Just Energy Transition Partnership announced in 2021 further supports this transition, aiming to decrease emissions by promoting cleaner energy alternatives.
Methane and F-Gases: Key Contributors
Methane and F-gases are significant contributors to South Africa's greenhouse gas emissions profile. Methane emissions, primarily from fugitive emissions in the energy sector and livestock, account for a substantial portion of the total emissions. Meanwhile, F-gases, although a smaller percentage of the total, have shown a notable increase over the past decade. The rise in F-gases is linked to industrial activities and the use of refrigerants. Addressing these emissions sources is crucial for South Africa to achieve its climate goals and further reduce its overall greenhouse gas emissions.
Background
Recent per Capita Emissions
The Recent per Capita Emissions are a crucial indicator of a nation's greenhouse gas emissions. They are a fair measure for comparing the emissions of nations, taking into account the size of their populations.
Because any greenhouse gas emissions above 0 cause warming, the per capita emissions shouldn't be judged against the global average; they should be compared based on how far they are above 0. Therefore, our rating scale is:
- Extremely High: above 10 tonnes per capita per year
- Very High: above 7.5 tonnes
- High: above 5 tonnes
- Moderate: above 2.5 tonnes
- Low: above 0 tonnes
- Negative Emissions: under 0
The per capita emissions should be close to zero for each country, indicated here by the green & low areas.
Last Year Emissions
This is the total amount of CO2, CH4, N2O, and F-Gases emissions of a nation in 2023 (last available year in the data) expressed in megatonnes of CO2-equivalents. The gases have different atmospheric lifetimes (decay) and warming effects, for this reason, we use the GWP100 (100 year time horizon method) to calculate the global warming potential of CH4, N2O, and F-Gases to express them in CO2-equivalents.
Wikipedia: Global Warming PotentialLast Year Share
This is a nation's share of the global emissions in 2023 (last available year in the data). For many countries this value can be quite small, especially when compared to nations like United States or China. It is easy and dangerous to jump to the conclusion that small shares of emissions don't matter. They matter as a group. Even small emitters can account for a significant amount of total emissions. Consider the following examples:
- 24 nations, each between 0.5 and 1.5% of the total emissions, make up 20% of the total emissions.
- 27 nations, each between 0.5 and 2% of the total emissions, make up 25% of the total emissions.
- 162 nations with a share below 0.5% make up 15% of the total.
- 3 nations, make 44% of the total emissions: China, United States and India. However, China and India together have a population of about 2.9 billion.
Per Capita Emissions are therefore the most crucial indicator to represent the impact of a nation regardless of its size.
Yearly Emissions Trend
This is a nation's trend per year over the last 10 years. It is a good indicator of the trajectory of national emissions and can be used as a simple framework to judge a nation's trend vs. international goals:
- Stop warming around 1.5 °C: All nations together, and each nation, should drop emissions by 17% per year — 8,000 Megatonnes of CO2 Equivalent per Year.
- To achieve Net Zero in 2050 and to stop warming at ~1.7 °C: All nations should together, and each nation, should drop emissions by 4% per year — 2,100 Megatonnes of CO2 Equivalent per Year.
- Additionally, to return warming to pre-industrial levels almost all human-induced CO2 has to be taken out of the atmosphere.
About the Data
The last available year in all the emission datasets is 2023. CO2 emissions data is from the Global Carbon Project. It contains national CO2 emissions from fossil sources and land-use change. Emissions from CH4, N2O and F-gases come from the PRIMAP-Hist dataset. It is a rich dataset that combines several published sources to create a historical emissions time series for various greenhouse gases. Population data are also from Global Carbon Project where available, however, for many nations it doesn't have historic population going back to 1850. Those historic gaps are filled with population data from Our World in Data.
The Key Insights paragraph was generated using a large language model (LLM) using a structured approach to improve the accuracy. This included separating the context generation from the interpretation and narrative.
Data Sources
Global Carbon Budget 2024 Global Carbon Budget
Update cycle: yearlyDelay: ~ 10 months after the end of the year. Current year values are estimated and published in November.Credits: Friedlingstein et al., 2024, ESSD. Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Li, H., Luijkx, I. T., Olsen, A., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Jackson, R. B., Alin, S. R., Arneth, A., Arora, V., Bates, N. R., Becker, M., Bellouin, N., Berghoff, C. F., Bittig, H. C., Bopp, L., Cadule, P., Campbell, K., Chamberlain, M. A., Chandra, N., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Colligan, T., Decayeux, J., Djeutchouang, L., Dou, X., Duran Rojas, C., Enyo, K., Evans, W., Fay, A., Feely, R. A., Ford, D. J., Foster, A., Gasser, T., Gehlen, M., Gkritzalis, T., Grassi, G., Gregor, L., Gruber, N., Gürses, Ö., Harris, I., Hefner, M., Heinke, J., Hurtt, G. C., Iida, Y., Ilyina, T., Jacobson, A. R., Jain, A., Jarníková, T., Jersild, A., Jiang, F., Jin, Z., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Klein Goldewijk, K., Knauer, J., Korsbakken, J. I., Lauvset, S. K., Lefèvre, N., Liu, Z., Liu, J., Ma, L., Maksyutov, S., Marland, G., Mayot, N., McGuire, P., Metzl, N., Monacci, N. M., Morgan, E. J., Nakaoka, S.-I., Neill, C., Niwa, Y., Nützel, T., Olivier, L., Ono, T., Palmer, P. I., Pierrot, D., Qin, Z., Resplandy, L., Roobaert, A., Rosan, T. M., Rödenbeck, C., Schwinger, J., Smallman, T. L., Smith, S., Sospedra-Alfonso, R., Steinhoff, T., Sun, Q., Sutton, A. J., Séférian, R., Takao, S., Tatebe, H., Tian, H., Tilbrook, B., Torres, O., Tourigny, E., Tsujino, H., Tubiello, F., van der Werf, G., Wanninkhof, R., Wang, X., Yang, D., Yang, X., Yu, Z., Yuan, W., Yue, X., Zaehle, S., Zeng, N., and Zeng, J.: Global Carbon Budget 2024, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-519, in review, 2024.
PRIMAP-hist The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023)
Update cycle: Every few monthsDelay: Less than 1 yearCredits: Gütschow, Johannes; Busch, Daniel; Pflüger, Mika (2024): The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023) v2.6. Zenodo.
Our World in Data Population - Our World in Data
Update cycle: YearlyDelay: 7 monthsCredits: HYDE (2023); Gapminder (2022); UN WPP (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data