South Africa is about to have a gas supply crisis.
Hundreds of South African factories, making everything from steel and glass to beer and soft drinks, depend on piped gas for industrial heat. Some factories, like steel mills and glass plants, can’t simply switch to solar. A glass furnace operates at over 1,400 degrees Celsius and requires sustained combustion heat that electricity cannot deliver yet at comparable cost or scale.
For others, like breweries and food manufacturers, electricity could theoretically substitute for gas. But it would cost six times more than the current piped gas they use, making their products uncompetitive overnight.
Eskom has also issued a tender for propane supply to its peaking plants. Peaking plants are gas turbine generators that only operate during periods of peak electricity use, such as early morning and evening. This is exactly the approach our research had proposed.
South Africa needs a viable gas supply before 2028, and propane is the only option that works at the country’s scale. It is a fossil fuel, but the emissions are very similar to the natural gas it replaces.
Delivering propane by road tanker carries the same risks as petrol delivery, which the industry already manages. Existing natural gas pipelines can also be converted to carry propane, eliminating road transport entirely.
Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions
The real advantage of propane over LNG is financial flexibility. When South Africa shifts to greener fuels, like biogas or green hydrogen, switching to those from propane will be a practical decision rather than a billion-dollar LNG terminal write-off.
Propane’s association with household gas cylinders has obscured its potential as an industrial-scale fuel. There is also a subtler force at work: large infrastructure projects systematically attract optimism (costs underestimated, benefits overstated) regardless of whether the economics actually work.
Time to choose
Propane gas is a direct replacement for natural gas in existing equipment. A strategy built around expanding wind and solar, with propane providing dispatchable electricity backup for the national grid and heat for industries, is affordable and available.
It does not require a US$500 million import terminal. It does not lock South Africa into 25 years of fossil fuel commitments. It does not ask electricity consumers to pay to set up gas infrastructure that the private sector has repeatedly declined to fund.
The gas cliff arrives in 2028, whether South Africa is ready or not. The question is not whether South Africa can afford to act. It is whether it can afford to keep ignoring the answer.
