This was the warning sounded by the Department of Minerals and Energy on Tuesday on the "immediate" need to put in place legislation to regulate the generation of alternative and renewable forms of energy.

The department's deputy director-general for hydrocarbons and energy planning, Nhlanhla Gumede, told MPs that a draft National Energy Bill, which had been in the making for the past five years, would be submitted to the cabinet by May for its consideration.

The legislation would seek to create a co-ordinated plan to deal with the energy crisis and to develop a strategy for the current need to urgently generate and produce renewable energy.

Eskom said last week that part of the steep price hikes it was proposing was to raise money for investment in renewable energy sources.

Gumede told the national assembly's committee on minerals and energy that South Africa's electricity crisis had shown that the country needed to catch up with the developed world and generate energy from other sources and not be reliant largely on coal.

South Africa was not the only country affected by shortages of oil, and the entire world would run out of crude oil within the next half-century, Gumede said.

"We will run out of crude in 44 years," he said.

"Before then the price of crude is going to go up just as it is doing right now, increasing and increasing, but at some point there won't be any crude left. It's a non-renewable source." 'What are we going to replace the transportation with?'

He said the country may not have enough surface space to replace all crude oil with biofuels.

"Even if you converted every piece of land we have just to grow these biofuels, there is not enough to even supply half of what is currently supplied by crude and demand is going to grow," Gumede said.