TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – China’s coal output and consumption had increased for the thirteenth consecutive year in 2012, consuming about four-billion tons and producing just over the same amount, which was almost as much as the total consumption and production of the rest of the world combined, a note by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday.

EIA analyst Joseph Ayoub said that China was by far the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, accounting for 46% of global coal production and 49% of global coal consumption.

As a manufacturing powerhouse that has large electric power requirements, China's coal consumption fuels its economic growth. China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 7.7% in 2012, following an average GDP growth rate of 10% a year from 2000 to 2011.

Ayoub pointed out that the top ten coal-producing countries supplied 90% of the world's coal in 2012.

“China produced nearly four times as much coal as the second-largest producer, the US, which had a 12% share of global production. China has accounted for 69% of the 3.2-billion-ton increase in global coal production over the past ten years,” he said.

Further, the top ten coal-consuming countries consumed about 85% of the world's coal in 2012. Eight of the ten largest producers were among the top ten consumers, and China was the largest coal consumer, accounting for 49% of the world's total coal. The next largest, the US, consumed 11% of the world's total.

China's coal consumption increased by more than 2.3-billion tons over the past ten years, accounting for 83% of the global increase in coal consumption.

Ayoub noted that coal accounts for most of China's energy consumption, and coal had maintained about a 70% share of Chinese consumption on a British thermal unit basis since at least 1980, the starting date for the EIA's global coal data.

By way of comparison, coal constituted 18% of US energy use and 28% of global energy use in 2012.