Wood was important in the US for industrialization. Unlike Europe, the US had lots of forests. Those might be enough for start.
Also, we know how to make electricity from solar, wind, and hydro. They need electricity and good design so may not work in beginning but for later stages.
As a cynical young adult I always giggled at the 'coke express' train cars that flew by on the railroad tracks but nowadays I know what that means what it's used for and how we get it.
I.e. so many of our modern industrial processes still depend on coal, and the alternatives often require huge energy inputs themselves.
So anyway, since fungi and bacteria are more evolved today, it's unlikely that such massive buildup of organic matter would occur again. Any given burial event would trap less organic material, so the resulting fossil fuel deposits would be smaller and it would take much longer for a given amount of carbon to be buried.
Of course this is just one theory and there are many other factors in fossil fuel formation as well.