A research program funded by the Swedish Energy Agency, the Swedish Knowledge Foundation and the Research Council of Norway was initiated by the companies; Holmen, Norske Skog, SCA and Stora Enso during 2008 with the objective to demonstrate techniques to reduce electrical energy demand by 50% for production of TMP and CTMP within a 10-year period starting 2011, while retaining similar final product characteristics of printing paper and paperboard. A gap analysis was performed to summarize different options to reach the goal at similar final product quality properties. The gap analysis indicated that some different approaches based on earlier research work both in pilot and demonstration scale together with improved process and product quality control should make it possible to reach the very tough goal. The very thorough benchmarking study was performed during 2012 including 16 TMP and CTMP-lines in Norway and Sweden showed the best production lines had the following electrical energy demands to certain final product properties; 900 kWh/t for CTMP optimized for paperboard, 1800 kWh/t for TMP optimized for newsprint and 2800 kWh/t for TMP optimized for SC-paper. The best results reached in industrial demonstration tests until 2015 showed potential to reduce the energy demand from 900 to 700 kWh/t for paperboard CTMP, from 1800 to 1400 kWh/t for newsprint TMP and from 2800 to 2400 for SC-paper TMP. In addition the results from other research within the program in the form of pilot and demonstration trials indicates that it could be possible to reach the goal of 50% reduced energy demand within a 10-year period provided that the industry and the research funds will continue to finance a continuation of the research program.