Seems to me we have been hearing a lot about this for 30 years almost and...
This isn't that thing crazy people have been forwarding around on Facebook where you send them money and get Nicola Tesla's secret blueprints for the perpetual motion machine, if that's what you're worried about.
an Italian project too...
This isn't that movie involving Mini-Coopers, if that's what you're worried about.
Ok, well... now MIT is involved so it seems more real. 15 years is soon enough.
Once upon a time I remember watching dad doodling up a circuit for something he wanted to build. He got out his pocket calculator, did a few calculations, and said "hmm. I need an inductor the size of a suitcase and a capacitor the size of a phonebooth." And he crumpled up his drawing and hucked it in the trash, and we went and watched TV. Ultimately the limitations on the things we can build usually come down to the limitations of the materials we have to work with. Who knows, maybe with better dielectrics and better manufacturing technology, dad's capacitor today might be the size of a car-battery instead of a phone-booth. Materials improve over time, and ideas that weren't possible 30 years ago might become possible now as we find new materials to work with and new ways of building things out of them.
There have probably been lots of ideas that have been put on hold because "we need a super-conductor/magnet/dielectric/heat-shield/etc that meets such-and-such a requirement and nothing like that even exists." But it might someday...
-k