The Department of Electricity and Energy has published a framework mapping about 95GW of offshore wind potential along South Africa's coastline, and it names energy-hungry coastal users, data centres among them, as the customers who could justify building it.

It identifies 6.4GW of floating potential off Cape Town against a municipal peak demand of roughly 2GW, and 17.4GW off Durban against eThekwini's peak of about 1.7GW. The framework says Cape Town could develop as a clean energy data centre hub.

Then you read the obstacles. South Africa has no mechanism for granting a developer exclusive rights to an area of ocean. Site exclusivity regulations have not been enacted. The Marine Spatial Planning Act does not say how areas should be designated; the national marine spatial plan is still being drafted, and offshore wind was left out of the National Coastal and Marine Spatial Biodiversity Plan entirely. Nobody has decided which department is in charge, and the framework notes regulatory changes here have been known to take up to two years before public participation and parliamentary oversight are counted.

Offshore wind appears nowhere in the draft Integrated Resource Plan. Under every scenario modelled, the first project is commissioned in 2035 at the earliest, at R1.59 to R2.13 per kWh, against the R0.49 onshore wind fetched in bid window five in 2021.

Costs only fall meaningfully in the 40GW scenario, which requires building 2.5GW to 3GW every year through the 2040s. The framework concedes offshore wind may not currently be competitive on price alone, and justifies it on industrialisation and jobs instead, though the headline figure is 300,000 job-years accumulated across two decades rather than jobs.

TechCentral's Fanie van Rooyen worked through the framework, which was prepared by the Carbon Trust under contract to the World Bank. Energy minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa's own foreword states the report is not a procurement plan, a policy determination, a capacity allocation or a commitment of public funds. His separate report the same day revealed Cape Town is drafting new guidelines for large data centre applications and that the rezoning granted in July for a hyperscale precinct at King Air Industria is suspended pending appeal. Equinix says the land is a long-term land bank with no immediate development plans.

South Africa's only proposed offshore wind farm, the 800MW Gagasi project off Richards Bay launched in 2022, had its environmental application withdrawn last year and the consultants say they are unsure of its status.

Hold the two announcements next to each other. National government is pitching offshore wind to data centres in Cape Town on the same day the city confirms it has suspended the only hyperscale rezoning it has approved and is rewriting the rules for the next one. The electricity needs laws that have not been written, a department that has not been appointed, a seabed leasing system that does not exist, and a decade.

Meanwhile, the GPUs going into Centurion need power this year, and Eskom is sitting on two to three gigawatts of surplus it is actively trying to sell at a discount. If you are siting a facility, the useful questions are what Cape Town's new guidelines will require and whether they apply to applications already lodged.

Offshore wind is a 2035 conversation at the earliest, and the framework is honest enough to say so.

You might also like our piece on MTN's 150MW data centre plan, Cape Town buying power below Eskom rates, and what Denmark does with data centre waste heat.

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