NATURAL-GAS CONSUMPTION AND CLIMATE - A COMPREHENSIVE SET OF PREDICTIVE STATE-LEVEL MODELS FOR THE UNITED-STATES

Separate models correlating natural gas (NG) consumption to climate ha ve been developed for the residential and commercial sectors of the 50 U.S. states. The models relate a population-weighted average temperat ure to state per capita NG consumption on a monthly basis. The majorit y of the models have Pearson correlation coefficients greater than 0.9 0 supporting the use of temperature as the sole independent parameter. The sensitivities of the models to a 1 degrees C increase in temperat ure, are compared for each state and the monthly sensitivity to climat e integrated over the entire U.S. is investigated for a range of tempe rature perturbations. The predicted impact of a 1 degrees C increase i n mean monthly temperature on U.S. consumption is an 8.1% decrease in the residential sector and a 5.9% decrease in the commercial sector. I n terms of the net consumption normalized over the study period (1984- 1993) this corresponds to a 111.8 TWh decrease in the residential sect or and a 47.0 TWh decrease in the commercial sector. The largest chang e for a single month occurs in January when consumption would decrease 19.7 TWh in the residential sector and 7.4 TWh in the commercial sect or. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.