South Africa’s biggest national park kissing Eskom goodbye

SANParks has announced a new green energy deal with Ampli Energy which will supply more than a quarter of the Kruger National Park’s annual energy requirements.

Ampli Energy is a month-to-month renewable energy product from Discovery Green, launched in May last year in partnership with Sasol.

Energy is generated elsewhere and delivered through the electricity grid using wheeling, allowing SANParks to power the park without installing large-scale generation in the protected area.

The Kruger National Park is the largest and most popular national park in South Africa, covering 2 million hectares and receiving around 1.8 million visitors every year.

The park has approximately 7,000 tourist beds, making up roughly half of the total capacity across SANParks’ 21 national parks.

The Kruger accounted for 60% of SANParks’ tourism revenue generation during the last financial year, which totalled between R3.3 billion and R3.5 billion.

This means that the Kruger National Park alone generated between R1.98 billion and R2.1 billion over the course of the previous year.

The size and popularity of the park has made it SANParks’ largest electricity user, accounting for around 70% of the entity’s purchased electricity emissions.

According to Discovery Green CEO Andrew Nepgen, the Kruger consumes around 29 million kWh of electricity a year, with 40% of this coming from its main camp, Skukuza.

Nepgen said the idea to power the park through renewable energy came to him two years ago as he drove past the park’s Phalaborwa Gate with Discovery Green executive director Dan Ginsberg.

At the time, however, he said there was no mechanism in place to allow this without large investments from SANParks or turning conservation land into energy-generation sites.

Ginsberg, who is the head of actuarial and R&D at Discovery Green, said the idea to launch Ampli Energy was originally inspired by this conversation around powering the Kruger.

Putting the mechanism in place

Discovery Green and Sasol launched Ampli Energy in May 2025 with the goal of providing South African businesses of all sizes immediate access to green energy at scale.

With no upfront costs and penalty-free cancellation, the initiative has been promoted as a no-fee, no-risk solution for businesses looking to cut emissions and electricity costs.

In an interview with 702, Nepgen said the purpose of Ampli Energy was to aid companies which didn’t have the capital or land to invest in renewable energy.

“We developed a mechanism whereby we can give organisations the same benefits that you’d get if you were to commit to a 20-year wind farm or solar plant,” Nepgen said.

“We wanted to do that but on a short-term basis, and I think the Kruger National Park is the perfect example of that in play.”

By the time Ampli Energy entered talks with SANParks over powering the Kruger, it was already supplying energy to 24 businesses at 200 sites across the country.

These ranged from various Nando’s franchise outlets and the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital to the Constitutional Hill Trust in Johannesburg.

With the mechanism now firmly in place, Nepgen said now was the time to power the Kruger National Park as they had initially set out to do.

Sasol executive vice president for business building, strategy, and technology Dr Sarushen Pillay described Sasol’s role in the agreement as central to the model.

“By using our Secunda complex as the backstop taker for Ampli’s renewable energy portfolio, we are accelerating decarbonisation across our business while helping SANParks do the same,” Pillay said.

“With its scale and energy demand profile, Secunda is a cornerstone of South Africa’s energy system, showing how the country’s largest industrial assets can support both energy security and the transition.”