By Lowell Feld, Guest Columnist

We've always felt that energy efficiency is a crucially important, yet undervalued, resource. That's why we're so happy to see the inaugural edition of the Building Efficiency Initiative newsletter, a joint effort of the World Resources Institute and Johnson Controls. To register for the newsletter, which will provide "global updates on innovative policies, projects and partnerships to improve energy and water efficiency in buildings, with a particular focus on activities in cities in rapidly emerging economies," click here.

Also, check out the above video, included in this month's newsletter, in which Building Efficiency Initiative Director Jennifer Layke "presents WRI’s effort in the building efficiency space." A few key points by Layke are:

The Motley Fool provides investment advice that is read by millions, and it frequently covers the clean energy sector, so it's definitely worth following. One recent column jumped out at us for its insights on a crucially important subject facing the clean energy industry: namely, how the distributed energy revolution is being received by utilities.  In this article, Motley Fool analyst Traivs Hoium examines three different utilities taking three differrent approaches.

By Lowell Feld, Guest Columnist

We've been making the case consistently for years now that moving from a dirty, unsustainable energy economy to a clean, sustainable one makes sense for a host of economic, environmental and national security reasons. The good news is that the industry is making progress with rapid growth in clean energy penetration that is hailed as a "tipping point” for the technology.

Our previous post discussed the continued subsidies and other favors flowing to coal and other fossil fuels. That includes President Obama's recent decision to open up "thousands more acres of public land to coal mining."  Now, a new study is out, highlighting how even as governments around the world " have made commitments to limit global temperature rise to 2°C," simultaneously "billions of dollars’ worth of government support continues to flow towards fossil fuels and, incredibly, towards coal."

David Roberts has left Grist and is now with Vox, but one thing hasn't changed: he's still one of the sharpest, most insightful analysts of U.S. energy and environmental policy around.  A recent piece by Roberts, "Obama opens thousands more acres of public land to coal mining," is a case in point, as Roberts analyzes the fundamental, underlying contradictions between: a) supporting clean energy scaling and understanding the imperative to deal with climate change on the one hand; and b) continuing to encourage fossil fuel production and exports on the other.

Here are five recommended reads for today (6/1/15).