I know peat was used for heating in the house, but I don't know how useful it was to run steam engines. Anyway, my claim is based on two articles from Low Tech

I know peat was used for heating in the house, but I don't know how useful it was to run steam engines. Anyway, my claim is based on two articles from Low Tech Magazine, each with their own sources: > So-called 'industrial water mills' had been used in Antiquity and were widely adopted in Europe by the fifteenth century, but 'industrial windmills' appeared only in the 1600s in the Netherlands, a country that took wind power to the extreme. The Dutch even applied wind power to reclaim land from the sea, and the whole country was kept dry by intermittently operating wind mills until 1850. > For example, the Dutch shipbuilding industry, which was centred around some 450 wind-powered saw mills, imported virtually all its naval stores from the Baltic: wood, tar, iron, hemp and flax > One of the most spectacular developments of industrial wind power technology occurred in the Zaan district, a region situated just above Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Although the area is surrounded by water, the potential of water power was limited because the land is as flat as it can be and so the flow of the rivers is low. The wind, on the other hand, is strong. Many of the applications of windmills described above appeared first (and sometimes only) in the Zaan district. > It is said that the region was the world’s first industrialized area. From 1600 to 1750, when the Netherlands became an important economical power, around 1,000 windmills were built and operated here (see the map on the left). Mills were given names, just like ships. Of course, that doesn't mean that coal (and peat) powered engines weren't used at the same time! Just that the Netherlands really doubled down on wind power very early on. [0] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industrial-windmills.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industria... [1] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-the-economy-on-the-weather.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-the-econo...