Seasonality, cointegration, and forecasting UK residential energy demand

Abstract

Much of the short-run movement in energy demand in the UK is seasonal, and the contribution of long-run factors to short-run forecasts is slight. Nevertheless, using a variety of techniques, including a recently developed estimation procedure that is applicable irrespective of the orders of integration of the data, we obtain a long-run income elasticity of demand of about one third, and we are unable to reject a zero price elasticity. An econometric model is shown to provide superior short-run forecasts to well-known seasonal time series models ex post, but is inferior to Box-Jenkins SARMA models when the determinants themselves have to be forecast. However, the relatively short data sample and small number of forecasts suggest caution in generalising these results.