About two years ago, Andre Nepgen and Dan Ginsberg were driving past the Phalaborwa Gate of the Kruger National Park when an idea struck them: Could they help power one of Africa’s most iconic conservation areas with renewable energy? At the time, however, the idea was easier to imagine than to implement.
The problem was finding a way to get renewable energy to the park without turning conservation land into an energy-generation site or asking South African National Parks (SANParks) to make a large capital investment in renewable infrastructure.
“We just didn’t have the mechanism to do it,” said Nepgen, the chief executive of Discovery Green.
Now, what began as a roadside idea is taking shape.
On Thursday, SANParks and Ampli Energy announced a renewable energy sponsorship agreement that will provide Kruger National Park with renewable energy equivalent to more than 25% of its annual electricity consumption.
Ampli Energy is a month-to-month renewable energy product from Discovery Green, in partnership with Sasol. The renewable energy is generated elsewhere and delivered through the electricity grid, allowing the park to benefit without having to build large-scale generation infrastructure inside Kruger.
For Ginsberg, the head of actuarial and R&D at Discovery Green, the project grew from that original roadside conversation. “It was a bit of a seed that was sown then,” he said.
“At that … time, we didn’t have the solution or the energy available but … as the opportunity came, we had the electrons available at our disposal that were green, coming from plants via our joint venture with Sasol, we thought: ‘Well, let’s try and make this a reality.’”
The missing piece was Ampli Energy, which was launched in May 2025 by Discovery Green and Sasol. Nepgen said the product was designed to overcome one of the difficulties facing businesses and other organisations wanting to use renewable energy: conventional renewable energy projects often involve long-term commitments, while organisations such as SANParks cannot necessarily predict their electricity needs decades into the future.
By then, the mechanism was in place. Ampli was supplying renewable energy to about 24 businesses across roughly 200 sites across the country, ranging from Nando’s and the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital to the Constitutional Hill Trust and small businesses.
“We said: ‘Listen, Kruger National Park is now — we finally get to do what we wanted to do because the mechanism is there,” Nepgen said.
Kruger is SANParks’s largest electricity user, accounting for about 70% of the entity’s emissions from purchased electricity. With more than 1.8 million visitors in 2025, its electricity demand is also growing.
Building renewable-energy generation inside the park would require significant capital and land — land that SANParks said was better reserved for conservation.
Instead, the partners are using South Africa’s evolving electricity market to wheel renewable energy through the national grid to Kruger. Ginsberg said the sponsorship would “greenify” more than a quarter of the park’s electricity use by wheeling renewable energy into the national grid on its behalf.
For Discovery Green, he said, the project was about more than building a renewable energy business. “If we didn’t start with a passion for the environment, for protecting nature and for conserving it, we wouldn’t have formed Discovery Green.”
Sasol’s role is central to the model. Dr Sarushen Pillay, Sasol’s executive vice-president for business building, strategy and technology, said Ampli uses Sasol’s Secunda complex as the “backstop offtaker” for its renewable energy portfolio.
“Ampli Energy is demonstrating how South Africa’s industrial base can be a catalyst for both energy security and the energy transition,” Pillay said. The arrangement was accelerating decarbonisation within Sasol while helping SANParks and other organisations do the same.
The partnership is in operation, with Discovery Green and Sasol having provided renewable energy equivalent to more than 25% of Kruger’s electricity consumption for the past few months.
Kruger consumes about 29 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, according to Nepgen. That makes the park an important target for reducing SANParks’ carbon footprint.
Hapiloe Sello, the chief executive of SANParks, described the initiative as a pioneering experiment for SANParks, saying the organisation wanted to protect the environment as consciously as possible while making the most of partnerships with the private sector.
Such partnerships, she said, were important to helping SANParks fulfil its conservation mandate. “This is what a public-private partnership looks like in action.”
SANParks manages 21 national parks covering more than four million hectares of land but Kruger is by far its biggest electricity user, with about 40% of Kruger’s electricity consumed at Skukuza.
“This is a truly monumental moment for us,” Sello said, describing the agreement as a pilot that could potentially be scaled up within Kruger and eventually across other national parks.
SANParks is also under pressure to reduce its carbon emissions while managing the financial demands of running a vast conservation estate. The organisation generated about 80% of its operating budget through tourism, Sello said, with tourism income helping to fund its conservation mandate.
Sello said the savings would give SANParks greater flexibility to support its conservation mandate, including tackling rhino and succulent poaching and snaring, addressing challenges faced by communities and investing in infrastructure and climate resilience.
She said its ability to generate 80% of its operating budget through its business activities meant that becoming more efficient could further reduce its dependence on the fiscus while freeing up money for conservation and other priorities.
The transition to renewable energy was also driven by past experience with load-shedding, when SANParks spent millions of rand on diesel to keep Kruger operating. “During load-shedding it was insane and these were some of the things that were driving us more to say we need to transition, we need to go into renewables.” Sello said she hoped the initiative would eventually be expanded. “This is like a pilot. We’re hoping that if this works well, we start scaling up in Kruger itself and then scaling up across the other parks.”
The renewable energy agreement therefore forms part of a broader effort to modernise infrastructure and improve resilience.
“By securing renewable energy equivalent to more than 25% of the park’s annual electricity consumption, we are strengthening the park’s long-term sustainability, improving energy resilience and demonstrating how conservation institutions can contribute meaningfully to a lowercarbon future,” Sello added.
For Discovery Green, however, the project began with something much simpler: two people driving past Kruger and wondering whether they could find a way to power it with renewable energy.