What drives China's natural gas consumption? Analysis of national and regional estimates

Hongdian Jiang, Xiucheng Dong, Qingzhe Jiang and Kangyin Dong ()

Energy Economics, 2020, vol. 87, issue C

Abstract: Natural gas, as a cleaner transition energy than other fossil fuels, has been widely used in China and, thus, further investigation of its potential determinants is particularly useful. For this purpose, this study explores the influencing factors for the consumption of natural gas in China and tests whether the natural gas Kuznets curve (GKC) hypothesis exists, using a panel of 30 provinces covering 1997–2015. To fully capture the significant differences in the natural gas markets across regions, the 30 provinces in China are re-divided into four regions in accordance with their natural gas consumption and economic level. Additionally, considering the possible cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity of the data, a series of econometric approaches that does accommodate cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity is utilized. For the full panel and four regions, cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity exist. The results indicate that, natural gas consumption is significantly and positively affected by economic growth, urbanization level, energy intensity, and economic structure in the long run, while energy consumption structure has a negative effect. In addition, only for the full panel, Regions I and II, is the GKC hypothesis valid. Also, the results of a panel causality test for the four regions are mixed, again confirming the presence of significant regional differences.

Keywords: Natural gas consumption; Potential determinants; Natural gas Kuznets curve (GKC); Cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 Q32 Q38 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988320300839
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:87:y:2020:i:c:s0140988320300839

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2020.104744

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

More articles in Energy Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().