The causality relationship between economic growth and coal, natural gas and oil consumption was investigated using the ARDL (autoregressive distributed lag bounds) testing approach for the 1980-2011 period in Brazil, Russian, India, China, Turkey and South Africa. According to long-run and strong causality results, there is bi-directional causality between oil energy consumption and Y for all countries. The long-run causality and strong causality results between coal consumption and economic growth indicated that there is bi-directional causality for China and India. According to long-run causality results and a strong causality result, there are bi-directional causality relationships between NGC (natural gas energy consumption) and Y for Brazil, Russia and Turkey. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.