Diverse approaches for reducing the total energy consumption of machine tools have been introduced and developed, to cope with rapid increase of total energy costs in world-wide manufacturing industries. To realize the improvement of the energy efficiency, systematic and integrated strategies must be considered, including energy-saving design, optimized control operation and concrete evaluation of the energy efficiency. This paper proposes key enabling technologies required to improve the energy efficiency of 5-axis multi-functional machining tools, considering both of system design and operation in the real production environments. Related standardized procedures of the energy efficiency evaluation is also represented.