Many poor countries face dwindling forest resources and yet continue to rely on wood based energy, The common wisdom pertaining to household consumption of woodfuels assumes that they are inferior goods. Much of the literature on woodfuels and alternatives presupposes a fuel-income ladder, where increases in per capita income will lead to woodfuel substitutes. While this assumption may hold true in the long term at the level of the structural transformation within a developing economy, evidence presented here for the case of Madagascar suggests that in the short and medium term in very poor countries, woodfuels are normal goods, This implies that reliance on income gains for alleviating pressure on forests from energy consumption is neither sound environmental policy nor sensible energy policy.