Forecast of China’s natural gas consumption using mathematical models

ABSTRACT

Based on the statistical data, natural gas consumption of China from 1995 to 2011, Boltzmann model and a third-order polynomial curve model are employed to fit the historical data, which aim to explore the rule of the past variation tendency and find out the proper model for forecasting. Fitting results demonstrate that a combination model based on the Boltzmann model and a third-order polynomial curve model can show great fitting result and its residual sum of squares and mean absolute percentage error are remarkably less than those of any previous models. According to the combined model, the average annual growth rate of the consumption in the next 7 years is 16.27% from 2012 to 2018.

KEYWORDS:

• Combination model
• forecasting
• mathematical model
• natural gas consumption
• numerical fitting