Regional heterogeneous drivers of electricity demand in Saudi Arabia: Modeling regional residential electricity demand

This study investigates the drivers of residential electricity demand in Saudi Arabia at a regional level for the period 1990–2018 using Structural Time Series Modeling. We find that Saudi Arabia's two waves of energy price reforms in 2016 and 2018 have had different impacts on residential electricity consumption across its regions. The empirical estimation results show that the long-run price responses of residential electricity demand vary across regions: from −0.20 in the Central region to −0.46 in the Eastern region. The short-run elasticities are −0.10 for the Central and Western regions, −0.15 in the Southern region, while the Eastern region's demand does not respond to price changes in the short run. The long run income elasticities of the regions' residential electricity demand also differ considerably: from 1.02 in the Western region to 0.27 in the Eastern region. The short-run income elasticities are 0.14 and 0.43 for the Eastern and Western regions, respectively while the residential electricity demand in the Central and Southern regions' does not react to income changes. We further estimate that hot weather conditions significantly impact all regions' residential electricity demand. Finally, we find that all regions saw some efficiency improvements in light of the energy price reforms, although there is a room for further improvements. The findings of the study can be useful for policymakers through the ways that we discussed in the paper.