With China’s commitments on “carbon peak” and “carbon neutral”, energy consumption optimization for discrete manufacturing has become an important hot issue. By reviewing and analyzing related researches on energy consumption of typical discrete manufacturing equipment such as machine tools and industrial robots, this paper summarizes energy consumption optimization methods for the discrete manufacturing, especially focusing on the promising intelligent optimization technology. The intelligent optimization for multi parameters in complex and variable working conditions is the trends of the energy consumption, which requires the combination of software and hardware.