Study on the relationships between coal consumption and economic growth of the six biggest coal consumption countries: with coal price as a third variable

Coal remains the world's most important energy resource and it reached the highest share of global primary energy consumption (29.9%) in 2012, which was the highest level since 1970 according to the statistics of the British Petroleum public limited company. As to the relationship between coal consumption and economic growth, many studies have been done and there have not been consistent results gained yet in previous research. To further explore the relationship and look for more reliable support for policy making in different countries, with coal price as a third variable, the panel data model using a common source of data from 2000 through 2010 is applied in this paper in the tests of unit root, panel cointegration and Granger causality among the six main coal consumption countries, namely China, the United States of America, India, Germany, Russia and japan. The tests show: (1) Bidirectional causal relationships between coal consumption and economic growth exist in Germany, Russia and Japan. (2) Only a unidirectional causality from economic growth to coal consumption exists in China. (3) There are no causal relationships between coal consumption and economic growth in USA and India. These coincident results with previous research further indicate that each country should form their own coal consuming policies according to their own situations. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.