Why can’t we use the kinetic energy of Earth spinning to generate electricity?
In: 2
We *can*! It’s just difficult.
While we may harvest energy, momentum is conserved. This leaves us with two options:
1. Lift objects away from the axis of spinning. This is the ‘easiest’ solution, but requires fighting gravity, and at that point we’re throwing away more energy fighting gravity than we’re gaining from the spin.
2. Find some other object in space to exchange momentum with. The nearest such object is the moon. Exchanging momentum with the moon isn’t really something we can do (yet) with human structures, but it is exactly what the tides are already doing. By harvesting some tidal energy we can generate useful energy from the Earth’s rotation. Unfortunately, tidal energy is often inconvenient and not particularly powerful.
Latest Answers