10 Energy Breakthroughs of 2014 That Could Change Your Life

From a new kind of light bulb to a carbon-removing power plant, a dazzling array of new technologies that promise to save energy and help fight global warming debuted this year.

They're not just gee-whiz hoverboards—levitating skateboards once considered Hollywood lore that California-based tech firm Hendo has actually managed to build. The developments include practical products for the home, as well as potentially huge advances in how we produce energy and get around. (See related story:

Just days before Christmas, Google unveiled what it calls the "first real build" of its self-driving vehicle, a prototype resembling the police cruisers in Disney'sCars movies. It said its May version was an "early mockup" that lacked even headlights, but its new one has everything for "fully autonomous driving"—an advance that could save gasoline by avoiding traffic jams and save lives by avoiding accidents.

"We're going to be spending the holidays zipping around our test track, and we hope to see you on the streets of Northern California in the new year.

"We're at the beginning of the beginning," General Motors executive Harry Lightsey said at a May briefing on driverless technology in Washington, D.C. "We have an abundance of new technologies." Lightsey added that how they're developed will say a lot about the auto industry in the next 25 years.

"There's a lot of uncertainty" about state and even federal rules that will apply to self-driving vehicles, Toyota's Hilary Cain said at the same Capitol Hill event. She said regulatory questions may be this emerging sector's biggest obstacle.

Swing-for-the-fence innovations—what Google calls "moonshots"—often face many obstacles on their way to market. Yet given the plethora of 2014 breakthroughs, some are bound to succeed. Aside from the driverless car, here are nine other compelling advances:

Grid-Scale Power

1. Lockheed Martin's high-beta fusion reactor. In October, the aerospace giant that, if it pans out, could yield limitless clean energy. It said it figured out a way to build compact fusion reactors within a decade. It's using so-called "magnetic mirror confinement" to contain the fusion of hydrogen nuclei—long considered the holy grail of energy research.

2. Carbon-capture coal plant. Also in October, about ten miles from the North Dakota border, Canadian electric utility SaskPower brought online the world's first large-scale, coal-fired power plant that captures the carbon dioxide it produces, keeping the greenhouse gas from being released to the atmosphere. A U.S. carbon-capture plant was expected to open in Kemper County, Mississippi, this year, but it has encountered delays.