Last week, when Lime Energy (NASD:LIME) announced that an internal investigation by its audit committee had revealed up to $15 million in misreported revenue, my first instinct was to sell, especially because the misreported revenue included not only revenue assigned to the wrong period, but possibly completely fictitious revenue.

Over the years electricity and, more recently, transportation fuels, have received the lion's share of attention from energy policy makers. Thermal energy, on the other hand, has been largely overlooked by state and federal lawmakers seeking to promote efficiency and renewable energy. Yet heat represents more than one-third of all energy consumed in the U.S., and many states have endorsed ambitious renewable energy goals that simply cannot be met without meaningful attention to thermal energy. For example, many states have endorsed 25 x'25, which proposes that 25% of all energy consumed come from renewable resources. This goal is unlikely to be achieved without thermal energy receiving the same attention as electricity and transportation fuels.