An energy crisis is one of the major aspects that the world is facing today. There is a mismatch between the energy supply and demand which keeps on increasing every year. It is necessary to reduce the consumption of energy without disturbing the performance of the system. A number of researches have been carried out on various experiments in this field in order to find out energy-efficient electro-hydraulic circuits used in CNC machine tools. In the present paper, a detailed literature survey was carried out on the recent works in the field of an electro-hydraulic system to find out the methods that researchers have adopted to reduce the energy consumption and increase the system efficiency. Attempts were made to understand and incorporate the concepts of fuzzy logic, VFD in the hydraulic circuit to achieve the goal. A detailed literature survey was carried out on drive technology in hydraulic circuits for energy efficiency, control strategies of open loop hydraulic system with a closed loop intelligent control system and design modification in electro-hydraulic circuits for leakage losses. © 2018 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l.-All rights reserved.