You sure can. The normal fair weather voltage gradient in the atmosphere is around 100V per metre. When there are close thunderstorms this increases. Unfortunately for energy collection air is quite insulative. That&#x27;s also fortunate in that we don&#x27;t get shocks all the time just from standing around in an environment where your head is 200V different than your feet.<p>Popular Science once ran an article that showed how to build an electrostatic motor that ran off the atmospheric electricity you could get with something like a wire used as a kite string.<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Atmospheric_electricity" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Atmospheric_electricity</a>