This struck many of the enthusiasts of the king's side, as much as it exalted the Scots; who were next day possessed of Newcastle, and so were masters, not only of Northumberland and the bishopric of Duresme, but of the coalries; by which, if they had not been in a good understanding with the city of London, they could have distressed them extremely: but all the use the city made of this was, to raise a great outcry, and to complain of the war, since it was now in the power of the Scots to starve them.--From History of his own Times--
They had a high percentage of wind and water power, but were still dependent on fossil fuels.
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Fossil fuels were a blessing to craftsmen and farriers and later to mechanical engineers: reliable feedstocks for heating and to fuel industries. Later, the coke itself was incorporated as steel. The industrial revolution simply wouldn't have happened without coal. Coal also enabled the making of iron and steel.
Oil packs even more BTU's per gram than coal, and gas even more than oil. To a chemist, the carbon-hydrogen bond is the currency unit of energy, worth about 100 kcal/mol. The H-H bond in dihydrogen is worth slightly more when it burns, but the problem is that we don't find underground reserves of the stuff.
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