The Application of Trend Analysis for Coal Demand Modeling

In the current modeling, trend analysis is used to model coal consumption (CC) and forecast the future coal demand. For modeling, trends in the CC of the world and the major coal consuming countries during 1965-2010 are identified. According to the trend observed, the appropriate regression analysis is employed to catch the best model concerning the relations between the CC and the years. The developed models are tested by t-distribution, F-distribution and residual analysis. Statistically significant trends are determined for the United States, India, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand, and the world. The results show that the proposed models can be used for the forecasting of future coal demand. It is also concluded that differences between forecasted CC by proposed models and forecasted CC by British Petroleum and International Energy Agency are also in the acceptable range.