There's a decent bit of energy in the average lightning strike, as you might expect; Real Clear Science estimates about a billion joules. That translates to around 278 kilowatt-hours, or enough to charge a standard Hyundai Ioniq 6 nearly six times over. There are around 1.4 billion lightning strikes every year globally, or about 44 every second, representing some 383.6 terawatt-hours of electricity flashing out of the sky for free. That's nearly 1.5% of global electricity consumption (at 2023 levels) – and quite a decent resource if we could capture it.