Quantifying Worldwide Demand Elasticities as a Policy Tool

About the Project KAPSARC is analyzing the shifting dynamics of the global gas markets. Global gas markets have turned upside down during the past five years: North America has emerged as a large potential future LNG exporter while gas demand growth has been slowing down as natural gas gets squeezed between coal and renewables. While the coming years will witness the fastest LNG export capacity expansion ever seen, many questions are raised on the next generation of LNG supply, the impact of low oil and gas prices on supply and demand patterns and how pricing and contractual structure may be affected by both the arrival of U.S. LNG on global gas markets and the desire of Asian buyers for cheaper gasKey PointsThis paper provides a comprehensive worldwide database of estimated elasticities for electricity and natural gas for households as a function of income, price, capital stocks and weather conditions.Emerging economies show lower price elasticities than advanced economies as a result of limited physical capital availability and lock in effect pertaining to energy consumption. Hot weather has a higher impact on energy demand in emerging economies than in advanced ones, as a result of higher efficiency and diversified technologically-advanced equipment. We find that the energy demand elasticity to capital stock is positive implying that the rebound effect prevails over the substitution effect when it comes to the deployment of capital stock technologies.For most countries, including former Soviet Union economies, natural gas is considered as an essential good while electricity is perceived, economically, as a luxury where its income elasticity is above unity

关于本项目
KAPSARC正在分析全球天然气市场的动态变化。在过去五年中，全球天然气市场发生了颠覆性的转变：北美地区崛起成为未来大型液化天然气（LNG）出口国，而天然气需求增长放缓，天然气在煤炭和可再生能源之间受到挤压。尽管未来几年将见证前所未有的液化天然气出口能力扩张，但关于下一代液化天然气供应、低油价和天然气价格对供需模式的影响，以及定价和合同结构可能受到美国液化天然气进入全球天然气市场以及亚洲买家对廉价天然气的需求的影响等诸多问题仍悬而未决。
关键点
本论文提供了一个关于全球范围内家庭用电和天然气弹性的综合数据库，该弹性是收入、价格、资本存量以及天气条件函数。新兴经济体由于物理资本有限可用以及能源消费的锁定效应，其价格弹性低于发达经济体。高温对新兴经济体能源需求的影响大于发达经济体，这得益于较高的效率和多样化的技术先进设备。我们发现，能源需求对资本存量的弹性为正，这意味着在资本存量技术的应用中，反弹效应超过了替代效应。对于大多数国家，包括前苏联经济体，天然气被视为基本商品，而电在经济上被视为奢侈品，其收入弹性大于1。