China’s residential gas revolution
China has connected more than 300 million people living in urban households to the natural gas network since 2010, according to data published late last year by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The number of urban residents with access to natural gas had nearly tripled to 484 million by the end of 2024 from 170 million at the end of 2010.
New additions have slowed recently to around 13-15 million people per year, down from 20-30 million, but the network is still being built out rapidly.
For decades, the government has promoted gas as a cleaner alternative to coal for cooking and heating to reduce air pollution in urban areas.
Nearly all urban households have been supplied with gas in some form but in many cases it was initially gasworks gas made from coal or bottled liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
More recently, however, the government has progressively replaced gasworks gas and bottled LPG with natural gas delivered through local pipeline networks.
As a result, the proportion of urban households with natural gas service had doubled to 51% in 2024 from 25% in 2010 …
date: 2026-02-14 01:21:00
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