While true, it's mostly pedantic. OP is talking about a potential earthquake harvesting power plant. So generating in this sense means releasing the trigger, in

While true, it's mostly pedantic. OP is talking about a potential earthquake harvesting power plant. So generating in this sense means releasing the trigger, in the same way that burning coal is generating energy. It's just releasing the stored chemical energy of the coal, but we still say that coal powerplants generate energy.