Open Access
ARTICLE
Analysis of Driving Factors of Natural Gas Consumption in China: Based on Regional Integration and LMDI Method
Huiwen Xu*, Zhen Wang
School of Economic and Management, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing, China
* Corresponding Author: Huiwen Xu. Email:
Energy Engineering 2021, 118(4), 1027-1043. https://doi.org/10.32604/EE.2021.015028
Received 17 November 2020; Accepted 28 December 2020; Issue published 31 May 2021
Abstract
In recent years, China has developed rapidly in terms of natural gas. Driven by regional economic integration, a
regional natural gas market composed of neighboring provinces and cities has taken shape gradually, and it tends
to grow toward the same direction in policy formulation, resource coordination, facility construction and market
expansion. Based on the factors such as geographical location, economic conditions and natural gas consumption,
this thesis tends to conduct a horizontal comparative analysis on the economic development conditions, natural
gas consumption characteristics and natural gas pipeline network density of the three regions with obvious regional integration feature in China. Then according to LMDI, four core indicators, namely economic growth effect,
energy intensity effect, energy structure effect, and substitution effect are selected. The thesis is expected to
explore the contribution of different indicators to the growth of natural gas consumption in these three different
regions. According to the results, it can be concluded that the driving factors of natural gas consumption differ
greatly among regions. Specifically speaking, the more developed the economy is, the greater the contribution of
the energy substitution effect to natural gas consumption will be, and the contribution of the economic growth
effect to natural gas consumption will be smaller. Despite that the contribution of energy intensity in different
regions shows slight difference, the energy structure contributes the least effect, which further explains the current
differences in China’s natural gas consumption characteristics and the reasons behind.
Keywords
Cite This Article
Xu, H., Wang, Z. (2021). Analysis of Driving Factors of Natural Gas Consumption in China: Based on Regional Integration and LMDI Method.
Energy Engineering, 118(4), 1027–1043.