Chinese capital Beijing would start to execute a multi-tier pricing mechanism on residential natural gas starting form January 1, 2016, said a notice by Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform on Thursday.
Meanwhile, retail residential gas prices would be linked to city-gate gas prices, the changes of which would automatically result in adjustment of retail residential gas prices. Public hearings and governmental approval are required if town-gas operators ask for retail residential gas price hikes on basis of higher operation costs. A household could pay 2.28 yuan per cubic meter for a baseline of 350 cubic meters of natural gas it consumes every year, and the price would increase to 2.5 yuan per cubic meter for the part of gas consumption above 350 cubic meters and 3.9 yuan per cubic meter for the consumption above 500 cubic meters.
The government also assigns additional three-tier town gas consumption quota to the households with wall-mounted boiler heating facilities. As much as 80 percent of households would not see increase of natural gas bill, according to the NDRC. Beijing has 5.74 million household users of pipeline natural gas with 99 percent of them belonging to residential households. Still, top 5 percent households consume 15 percent of total residential gas. As the largest city consumer of natural gas, Beijing would see 1.5 billion cubic meters of residential gas consumption in 2015.
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