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For me the best energy is the energy that we don’t use. In other words, energy efficiency. There is no cleaner kilowatt/hour than the one we don’t consume. Every cubic meter of gas we don’t burn makes us a cubic meter less dependent on foreign supplies. Every barrel of petrol that we don’t need makes our economy a barrel less vulnerable to volatile oil prices. 

An idealized application for superconductors is to employ them in the transmission of commercial power to cities. However, due to the high cost and impracticality of cooling miles of superconducting wire to cryogenic temperatures, this has only happened with short "test runs". In May of 2001 some 150,000 residents of Copenhagen, Denmark, began receiving their electricity through HTS (high-temperature superconducting) material. That cable was only 30 meters long, but proved adequate for testing purposes. In the summer of 2001 Pirelli completed installation of three 400-foot HTS cables for Detroit Edison at the Frisbie Substation capable of delivering 100 million watts of power. This marked the first time commercial power has been delivered to customers of a US power utility through superconducting wire. Intermagnetics General has announced that its IGC-SuperPower subsidiary has joined with BOC and Sumitomo Electric in a $26 million project to install an underground, HTS power cable in Albany, New York, in Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation's power grid. Sumitomo Electric's DI-BSCCO cable was employed in the first in-grid power cable demonstration project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and New York Energy Research & Development Authority. After connecting to the grid successfully on July 2006, the DI-BSCCO cable has been supplying the power to approximately 70,000 households without any problems. The long-term test will be completed in the 2007-2008 timeframe.

Results from a year-long study on high-tech electricity meters found smart grid technology performed as intended, saving consumers about 10 percent on their bills while easing strain on the power grid.

On January 25th the sector experienced a huge shock when the state-owned electric utility Eskom informed the big mining companies that it could only provide for 50% of the mines’ usual needs for the months to come. The consequence? Mines had to be shut down. You don’t want your miners stuck hundreds of meters deep below the surface and see the light suddenly go off.

The world’s largest wind turbine is now the Enercon E-126. This turbine has a rotor blade width of 126 meters (413 feet). The E-126 is a more sophisticated version of the E-112, formerly the world’s largest wind turbine and rated at 6 megawatts.

DOE and SuperPower, Inc. commemorated on February 21 a $27 million project to install a 350-meter high-temperature superconducting (HTS) cable between two electrical substations in Albany. While that might not sound like much cable for the money, the project is the first demonstration of a technology that could someday be used to build a more energy efficient power grid. The HTS cable reduces energy loss by up to 10%, and wires using the same technology could potentially be integrated into generators, transformers, cables, and fault current limiters, making most of the equipment that produces and delivers power more energy efficient. On the other end of the power line, HTS wires can be employed in motors, providing an energy efficiency improvement for one of the largest electrical loads served by electric utilities.

Project Better Place, owned by Israeli-American entrepreneur Shai Agassi, will provide lithium-ion batteries to power the cars and the infrastructure to refresh or replace them. One battery will enable the cars to travel 124 miles per charge. Project Better Place will install parking meter-like plugs on city streets and construct service stations along highways to replace the batteries. [2] Renault-Nissan will build the new cars and will offer a small number of their existing electric models, such as the “Megane” sedan, at prices roughly comparable to gasoline models. To promote this form of environmentally efficient transportation, the Israeli government cut the tax rate on cars powered by electricity to 10 percent (from 79 percent on ordinary cars) to encourage consumers to buy the vehicles once they become available. [3] This initiative will offer consumers an inexpensive car for which they will pay a monthly fee based on expected mileage.