This chapter charts how, from the early eighteenth century, imperial elites projected visions of improvement and abundance onto Russia’s wetlands, reimagining them as fuel deposits. The prospect of substituting peat for timber motivated state officials, landowners, scientists, and later the directors of industrial companies to explore ways to convert peat into heat energy. The chapter argues that the appropriation of wetlands for fuel generation was, by and large, an elite project that imposed the developmentalist visions of the imperial state and industrial elites on peatlands and the people living with them. While most peasants continued valuing peatlands for what they offered above ground, elite groups conceptualized peat as a substance on its own rather than a component of a larger web of relationships co-created by living organisms, water, abiotic matter, and the climate. This reductive understanding of peatlands would underpin the history of peat extraction in central Russia until the end of the Soviet period.