A new sustain circuit for an AC plasma display drive is proposed. The proposed circuit uses the instantaneous peak current flowing through the inductor during the charging and discharging of a plasma display panel, to recover most of the energy lost by the capacitive displacement current. This circuit can be realised with a small part-count, and gives the zero-voltage switching characteristics to all the switches even in the presence of a parasitic resistance, essential for the design of a sustain circuit for an AC plasma display. The capacitive displacement current and the required reactive power are greatly reduced in the proposed circuit. A comparative analysis and experimental results are presented to show the validity of the proposed energy recovery circuit.