Teraco consumed 399.3GWh of electricity in 2025, more than three times what it used in 2021, according to the data centre operator’s latest sustainability report. Its ability to keep that growth from placing additional demand on South Africa’s coal-heavy grid now depends almost entirely on a single solar farm in the Free State.
The consumption figures show a business scaling faster than its clean energy supply. Teraco used 130GWh in 2021, 231.6GWh in 2023 and 399.3GWh last year – compound growth of about 32%/year. Averaged over the year, that is a draw of roughly 46MW, up from under 15MW four years ago.
The share of that power coming from renewable sources has gone backwards. Renewables accounted for 15.77% of consumption in 2023 and 14.04% in 2025. On a broader clean energy measure, which counts nuclear and imported hydro alongside renewables, the figure peaked at 19.83% in 2023 and sat at 18.87% last year. Rooftop solar, which occupies several pages of the report, produced 5.25GWh — 1.3% of what the company used.
The project meant to close that gap is Sediba, a 120MW utility-scale solar plant in the Free State costing R2.25-billion and rated at 354GWh/year. Teraco secured its grid capacity allocation from Eskom in February 2024 and began construction that November, at which point it said the plant would come online in late 2026. The new report puts completion at the first quarter of 2027.
Teraco says it remains on track to source half its energy from clean sources by 2027, from 18.87% today. Sediba’s 354GWh is equal to 89% of what the company consumed in 2025 – but consumption is the moving part. At the four-year trend growth rate, Teraco would be using roughly 700GWh by 2027, at which point Sediba covers about half.
Four wind projects contracted with NOA under power-purchase agreements have broken ground, with the first expected to reach commercial operation in the third quarter of this year. The report does not give a megawatt figure or an annual output for them, which leaves the wind contribution impossible to size from the outside.
Emissions
Emissions have followed consumption. Location-based Scope 2 emissions rose from 121 640 tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2021 to 388 184 tonnes in 2025. Adding Scope 1 and Scope 3 puts the 2025 footprint at 519 594 tonnes. Two caveats apply: the grid emission factor used in the calculation changed from 949.1g to 985g/kWh partway through the series, so the years are not strictly comparable, and these are location-based figures rather than the market-based numbers that renewable contracts will eventually improve.
Parent company Digital Realty has an approved Science Based Targets initiative commitment to cut absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions 42% by 2030 against a 2023 base. Teraco’s own Scope 1 and 2 were 237 873 tonnes in 2023 and 392 172 tonnes in 2025, moving away from that line rather than towards it. The report says market-based Scope 2 emissions are expected to fall significantly from 2027 as the renewable projects come online. The gap between the two accounting methods is where the target lives.
Teraco has been publishing this data since 2022, which is more than most of its competitors do. The South African Human Rights Commission is currently running an inquiry into the human rights implications of the country’s data centre build-out, and the submissions to it complain that no regulator can see the sector’s full electricity and water footprint because operators do not disclose it. Teraco is among the few that publish this level of detail. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media
