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Social science approaches commonly used in household energy consumption research tend to focus on regular, everyday determinants of household behavior (discourse, practices, sociotechnical relations, actor-networks, etc.). Their conceptual frames avoid consideration of economic inequality and how it affects home ownership, energy efficiency investment, norms, practices, power relations and, consequently, energy use. This may have roots in a split between macroeconomics and sociology dating from the mid-20th century, while a focus on regular, everyday determinants of behavior was no doubt useful in the relatively egalitarian societies of the 1950s–1980s. But economic inequality has rapidly increased within high-income countries over the past 30–40 years, enabling high-wealth individuals' influence to grow. We argue this has decisive effects on the choices available to households in their energy …