UCT had undertaken substantial energy reviews by 2024 to identify the areas of highest energy use and waste across its campuses. The UCT Carbon Footprint Assessment Report – 2024 confirms that electricity consumption, particularly on Main Campus, is systematically analysed each year as part of UCT’s annual carbon-inventory process, which has been conducted consecutively since 2012.

The report explicitly highlights electricity use as the university’s dominant and most controllable emissions source, noting that Main Campus alone accounts for 64% of Scope 2 emissions, and identifies this concentration as the primary target for energy-management and efficiency interventions. Through this annual review process, UCT is able to track shifts in energy consumption by campus and facility, identify anomalies in consumption patterns, and pinpoint key drivers of energy waste—such as HVAC, lighting loads, and inefficiencies associated with older building systems. Previous years’ inventories have similarly provided year-on-year analysis of electricity consumption, energy intensity and fluctuations related to operational changes, forming a long-term evidence base for identifying high-waste areas.

Beyond carbon-footprint reviews, UCT has also commissioned formal building-level energy audits: SEM Solutions completed 16 detailed energy-audit reports on UCT buildings, providing granular breakdowns of energy use across HVAC, lighting, equipment and computing systems, and quantifying where waste was highest.

Together, these formal energy audits and UCT’s recurring, protocol-aligned energy-consumption reviews demonstrate that the university had a documented and evidence-based process in place by 2024 to identify major sources of energy waste and guide targeted efficiency measures.