Industrialization starts in places with access to coal. Without coal you do have water power, but geared water power at the scale a factory can afford doesn't produce the high speed and torque for things like metal cutting lathes.
Industrialization produced a change in attitude towards science. You might eventually get to oil without this, but if oil is also vastly rarer you don't bridge all the way to nuclear. You don't get the technology to run closed cycle nuclear coolant loops and heat exchangers without prior experience with oil and coal. You never get to solar because without coal operated machinery you can't make the large, flat mirrors.
Big Hydro requires electrification which requires lots of wire which is extruded using machines powered by coal. It also uses turbines made with machinery powered by coal and invented for better harnessing steam power from coal.
Methane and hyrdogen and compressed air are storage solutions, but coal and oil are energy sources. Storage solutions are useless without energy sources.
Industrialization produced a change in attitude towards science. You might eventually get to oil without this, but if oil is also vastly rarer you don't bridge all the way to nuclear. You don't get the technology to run closed cycle nuclear coolant loops and heat exchangers without prior experience with oil and coal. You never get to solar because without coal operated machinery you can't make the large, flat mirrors.
Big Hydro requires electrification which requires lots of wire which is extruded using machines powered by coal. It also uses turbines made with machinery powered by coal and invented for better harnessing steam power from coal.
Methane and hyrdogen and compressed air are storage solutions, but coal and oil are energy sources. Storage solutions are useless without energy sources.
Someone at Firaxis Software said:Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken.