Climatic impacts on residential natural gas consumption: Evidence from Hefei, China

Abstract

The number of cold days will gradually decrease due to climate change, thus reducing the use of natural gas as it is the primary energy source for winter heating. However, with the improvement of urbanization level and the deepening of the energy revolution, China's natural gas heating users have increased rapidly. Therefore, assessing the impact of residential natural gas use on climate change in China is extremely important, whether in terms of migration or adaptation policies. Using bimonthly bill-level data from Hefei residents' gas consumption, this study investigates the impact of temperature change on gas consumption. Specifically, the different effects over the various ratios of wall-mounted boiler heating users are analyzed. On average, when the annual temperature increases by 1 °C, the gas consumption is reduced by 2.08 %, for wall-mounted boiler heating users, the impact is even −3.34 %. Considering the increasing of the penetration rate of the gas wall-mounted, the above reduction induced by climate change could be offset—if the penetration rate is higher than 57 %, it could be fully offset. As the critical role of natural gas in China's energy transition, our findings have significant implications for alleviating natural gas supply and energy substitution in China.