High altitude lightning (HAL) discharges are a family of short lived electrical-breakdown phenomena that occur at altitudes ranging from cloud tops to the ionosphere. HAL discharges include mainly blue starters, blue jets, red sprites and elves. In this paper, it is described that the tropospheric cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning discharges pave the way of HAL discharges. The electric field, generated due to CG lightning discharge in the upper atmosphere is calculated. This electric field deposits the heat energy in the ambient space which comes in the form of HAL discharges. An altitude profile of heat energy density, deposited in the body of HAL discharges is also calculated. The HAL generating electric field deposits huge amount of energy at lower altitudes as compared to the higher altitudes. The energy loss at an altitude of 20 km where blue starters/jets initiate comes out to be of the order of 10-4 Jm-3. Similarly the energy loss at sprite initiating altitude (70 km) comes out to be of the order of 10-8 Jm-3. This shows that the blue starters/jets are more luminous as compared to the red sprites, which is in conformity with the experimental observations.