[michaelmarion]

IANAP, but a layman's understanding: the materials that we have available today to conduct electricity at or around room temperatures largely do so in an inefficient manner. As electricity moves through the material, some energy is wasted in the form of ejected heat.

To circumvent this, physicists discovered superconductivity: a state in which a material is a perfectly efficient conductor of electricity. Thus far, to create a superconductive material requires keeping that material at extreme conditions of temperature and pressure.

A room-temperature superconductor is a game-changer because we could get nearly-perfect energy efficient electric conduction without the additional energy overhead it takes to keep the material at such a dense pressure or extreme temperature. Such a material would have wide applications across a variety of disciplines.

Here's a useful article as well: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0953-2048/26/11/1...

[Salgat]

"Inefficient" is a rather relative term here, since batteries, motors, and transmission wires are >=95% efficient already.

[Iulioh]

Is not like we lose 5% of the stuff and that's it.

We lose it to HEAT and that has a lot of limitations like the stuff melting and exploding.