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‪Energy historians tell the story of industrialisation in the 19th century as a process of transition: wood lost ground as an energy source to coal, which became the dominant energy source in England in the 18th century and in other industrialised countries in the mid-19th century. This article shows how wrong that story is. The curves showing the extraordinary dominance of coal in energy systems at the beginning of the 20th century mask an equally extraordinary dependence on wood. To say that there was no transition is not to say that nothing changed, but rather that the change was not the one described by standard energy historiography. The dynamics of the relationship between coal and wood are different. Rather, we should speak of a symbiotic relationship that intensified in the 19th century, followed by a disengagement in the second half of the 20th century.‪