Application of a novel time-delayed polynomial grey model to predict the natural gas consumption in China

The government of China is now trying to use natural gas as partial substitute of other fuels, such as coal and gasoline. Developing the natural gas industry has been written in the 13th Five Year Plan of China, which is the most important official policy of China. Predicting the natural gas consumption comes to be very important for the government and energy companies to make decisions. In this paper, we propose a novel time-delayed polynomial grey prediction model, which is abbreviated as TDPGM(1, 1), based on the grey system theory to forecast the natural gas consumption of China in comparison with the commonly used prediction models. The data from 1995 to 2004 are used to build the prediction models, and the data from 2005 to 2013 are used to assess the modelling accuracy. The results show that the TDPGM(1, 1) model outperforms the other models. Finally the TDPGM(1, 1) model is used to forecast the natural gas consumption of China from 2014 to 2020 and different results from the previous research results have been obtained.