Ambient energy

Ambient energy is nature’s energy that never gets harnessed by people. This energy is often useful anyhow. Energy sciences focuses on energy that people harness from nature. These fuels and flows of primary energy are gathered from nature to allow humans to have a high energy society. People also benefit from energy that isn’t gathered but exists in nature, in ways that we rarely think about. This ‘’’ambient energy’’’ dwarfs the primary energy that is extracted from nature (in both fuels and flows combined).

To give an example of this difference, we look at sunlight. Sunlight that we use to see as we walk around (this is different from the sunlight we gather for photovoltaic cells and turn into electricity, that would be primary energy, since it’s gathered). There’s quite a bit more sunlight bouncing around our environment, enabling us to see, than we’ll ever capture in photovoltaic cells. Some other examples of ambient energy that are essential for people’s well being:

• The thermal energy in the Earth’s atmosphere that makes our planet the right temperature to support life.
• The chemical energy that went into making our atmospheric oxygen. Molecular oxygen in a planet’s atmosphere is incredibly rare, and took more than a billion years of sunlight-powered photosynthesis to make happen
• The kinetic energy of the Earth travelling around the Sun, which keeps us from falling into the sun.
• The rotational kinetic energy of the Earth spinning on its axis, giving the day-night cycle.
• The kinetic energy in the ocean’s currents that circulate nutrients and thermal energy.
• Energy in the Earth’s magnetic field that protects life from harmful cosmic rays.
• Ambient energy requires no infrastructure and no investment by people, so it’s easy to forget about it.

The term Ambient energy was created by the Energy Education team because we couldn’t find a name that anyone else used for this energy. We believe that this concept is important, but will happily change the phrase we use to describe this if someone can point to a more commonly used, or more clear phrase.