The New York Times

I’ve begun thinking that one of the defining questions for clean energy is, “What’s the plan?” Not a company plan, but a country plan -- one that realistically maps us to an economy that gets the vast majority of its energy from wind, solar, geothermal, and that has us drastically minimizing waste.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced it will postpone, by 18 months, some of the stricter new Energy Star appliance efficiency standards mandated in the wake of the March 2010 scandal over laxity and false reporting triggered by a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar says reports that the U.S. government has approved BP's (NYSE: BP) requests to resume drilling at its existing wells in the Gulf of Mexico are inaccurate.

The nuclear situation in Japan is heating up. As the death toll estimate soars to 10,000 and citizens continue to reel from a massive earthquake that rocked Japan and caused a giant tsunami, concerns are on the rise for the threat of nuclear meltdown at damaged reactors.

The controversy around hydraulic fracturing continues to build in the United States.  The latest storyline surrounds the battle over instituting stiffer regulations on the industry.

After the New York Times recently published an expose on the environmental dangers posed by hydraulic fracturing as a result of lax government regulations on the industry, two members of the House of Representatives have written letters to the Environmental Protection Agency requesting immediate action to add

Directors, executive officers and other insiders of Molycorp, Inc., (NYSE: MCP) get their first opportunity tomorrow to sell their shares in the company since its initial public offering (IPO) in late July. 

Molycorp is the cornerstone of the U.S. effort to gain a foothold in the production of rare earth elements (REEs), critical ingredients in wind turbines, electric vehicles, thin-film photovoltaic (PV) solar system and high-efficiency lighting. 

This will be known as the year a small group of companies exploring for “rare earth elements”, known in the red-hot niche sector as REEs, dramatically outperformed all other clean tech and energy efficiency companies, as well as all other sectors of the stock markets.

Shares of several companies pursing REEs, which are critical ingredients in wind turbines, electric vehicles, thin-film photovoltaic (PV) solar system and high-efficiency lighting, have increased more than two or three times in 2010. Examples: Molycorp, Inc., (NYSE: MCP) +394 percent, Lynas Corporation Limited (ASX: LYC.AX) +260 percent, Avalon Rare Metals, Inc. (TSE: AVL.TO) (AMEX: AVL) +125 percent , Rare Element Resources Ltd. (AMEX: REE) (CVE: RES.V) +361 percent, China Shen Zhou Mining & Resources Inc. (AMEX: SHZ) +1200 percent; and penny stock Focus Metals Inc. (CDNX: FMS.V) +232%.

The economic recession has hit renewable energy industries in the United States hard, and the effects have been accentuated by the country's lack of national renewable energy policy.

Now that the climate bill is in hibernation, it would be easy to despair that the US power sector will resume its tradition of burning high-polluting coal to sell increasing amounts of electricity.