Meeting future energy demands with more efficient, lower emission, and safe energy technologies has top priority in the medium term. Consumer-friendly energy concepts, integrated into regional and supraregional energy supply structures, represent further elements. These will make important contributions to resource-conserving and environmentally compatible power supplies utilizing local energy sources including renewable resources. Supplying energy to large areas involves additional tasks, from compensation of large amounts of fluctuating energy to the transport of renewable energy over long distances. Solar dish, parabolic section, and tower power generating plant have considerable economic and CO2-reduction potential in sunny countries, such as in the Mediterranean region, However, the costs of solar-thermal electricity generation have to be reduced by a factor of 1.5 to 2. Fuel cell systems can attain particular significance as efficient low-emission energy conversion systems in power plant and automative engineering once their technical and economic : potential can be realized.