Examining data from 2019?2021, the authors find that the lowest-income households reacted to an income decline by reducing their total energy consumption and using less coal, whereas those with slightly higher incomes used more coal. Spending more time at home during the pandemic in the context of a falling income may have created incentives to switch to a cheaper fuel. These findings highlight the potential challenge that income shocks impact energy consumption patterns even of higher-income households and could stagnate the transition to clean fuel.