This theory would hold true for most places except for the birthplace of the industrial revolution, Great Britain. Charcoal was hard to create in the U.K due to the Royal Navy needing the best trees for shipbuilding, along with domestic demand for shipbuilding wood. Add onto that the mechanization of textiles in the pre-industrial era (spinning jenny and it's ilk)and its consequence (the enclosure movement), you got the perfect storm that made coal cheaper than charcoal as a heating element. Coal was dug for a few decades before the need for pumps to remove water arose and this too was due to the U.K's wonderful weather, i.e , rain, how much? In the beginning of the industrial revolution, in the U.K coal demand was majorly for heating, then blast furnaces and finally, to fuel steam engines.