A local think tank says the Australian coal industry is using overblown and hyperblic claims to make itself seem more influential and important than it really is.

The Australia Institute's latest paper, “All Talk, No Action”, slams coal mining companies for claiming they are reponsible for the livelhoods of those in energy-poor nations.

The coal sector's claims are also touted by Australian federal ministers.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently described coal as "good for humanity", and Environment Minister Greg Hunt says a planned expansion of the Abbot Point coal port in Queensland that will link mega-mines planned for the Galilee Basin "is about providing electricity to up to 100 million people in India".

But the Australia Institute says the industry actually does very little to help the internationally-disenfranchised, maintaining the status quo while making inflated claims of its positive impact.

The report is hinged on separate research by the International Energy Agency on Africa, which found the cost of connecting communities more than three kilometres from the grid was so high (about $AU523 per megawatt-hour), that alternative sources were often more viable.

In many cases, it found solar panels and small wind generators could connect people for less than $US300 per mWh.

Big miners have played up the importance of coal in creating economic growth, with Peabody Energy describing the fuel as “a significant catalyst for economic growth”, for instance.

The Australia Institute's Rod Campbell says this link is one of correlation, not causality.

“It's not coal use that's making people busier and more productive - it's the busier, more productive people who are sometimes using more coal,” he told Fairfax Media.

Mr Campbell says coal companies claim to be doing what many great figures of history have tried too, only the miners' efforts are more self-serving.

“After a century of making a fortune selling coal to those who could afford it and ignoring those who couldn't, the mining industry has had an epiphany. Poor people in poor countries lack many of the necessities that Australians take for granted, and, according to their PR firms at least, the miners really want to do something about it,” he claims.

“The world's greatest hearts and minds have long wrestled with the issue of how to lift people out of poverty. Mahatma Gandi, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates – they've all spent years pondering where best to start and how best to help. Is it by educating the masses, preventing aids and malaria, providing micro finance, or just cutting taxes and letting the market rip?

“The coal miners have stumbled onto a much simpler solution. We just need to sell more coal,” he said, in an article for WA Today.