Would it be possible to extract energy from simple matter

Question

For example Hydrogen is H1 (has one electron)

Ununoctium (has 118 electrons)

All matter contains a level of electrical charge, thus it contains energy. (no energy absolute zero)

So why can't we simply hook up a wire to a piece of carbon (C6) and extract the electrons?

Sorry if this is a dumb question.

Answer 1

Because the electrons are quite happy to remain around their nucleus; you have to coax them out of there and that requires energy (removing electrons from an atom is called ionization, and is usually done by heating the stuff to plasma level).