Analysis of factors influencing medium and long-term natural gas demand based on random forest algorithm

CAO Xin; WU Qi; WANG Xuan; XIE Yu

Abstract：Natural gas plays an important role in the process of energy transition,and it is crucial to deeply explore the key influencing factors of natural gas demand in the medium and long term.Taking China and 30 provinces as the research object,systematically sorted out the influencing factors of medium and long term natural gas demand with different granularity,the historical data from 2003 to 2022 were collected and processed,and the random forest algorithm was used to screen and sort the influencing factors.The results show that:The random forest algorithm is highly applicable;From the overall situation,GDP(gross domestic product),the proportion of secondary industry,the proportion of tertiary industry,the urbanization rate,the proportion of natural gas consumption,the proportion of electricity consumption,the length of urban natural gas supply pipeline and the population of urban natural gas use are relatively important influencing factors;The influencing factors are different in different provinces,There are great differences in influencing factors among different provinces,which are mainly caused by characteristics in economic development level,resource endowment,energy consumption preference and geographical location.Therefore,when carrying out natural gas industry planning and policy formulation,it is recommended to give classified policies according to local conditions,so as to promote natural gas to play a greater role in the construction of a new energy system.