A combination forecast for energy-related CO 2 emissions in the United States

This paper seeks to provide an alternative forecast to that provided by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) on energy-related monthly CO2 emissions in the United States. The data on CO2 emissions from petroleum, natural gas, coal and total fossil fuels obtained via the EIA covering the period January 2005 to November 2013 is analysed and then forecasted using ARIMA, Holt-Winters, and Exponential Smoothing prior to introducing the Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) technique for CO2 emissions forecasting. A new combination forecast (EIA-SSA) is also introduced by merging the SSA and EIA forecasts, and is seen outperforming all models including the EIA forecast. Finally, the EIA-SSA model is used to provide an alternative 12 month ahead outlook for US energy-related CO2 emissions from December 2013 to November 2014. This research is expected to influence the methodology adopted by the EIA for forecasting CO2 emissions in the future by improving the accuracy of the forecasts, and the impact of this study will be clearer upon comparing the actual CO2 emissions in US with the EIA, and EIA-SSA forecasts over the 12 month period which follows.

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