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Energy storage (e.g. batteries) — considered something of a silver bullet — still presents sizable technological hurdles, while efficiency is now clearly the low-cost, plain vanilla version of clean tech.

This rotation of sorts is commonplace in maturing industries. Still, to mark our annual November "Green Is Universal" Week , we decided to take a broader view — wrapping in other developments in the alternative energy sector this year — to create our "Winners and Losers" special report.

By no coincidence energy efficiency and storage, specifically electric cars, along with the booming recycling business, are our three winners.

At the same time, the U.S. solar industry is clearly one of our three losers. So is the global nuclear business. Both, unfairly or not, are linked to major negative news events: the stunning failure of solar producerSolyndra , an Obama administration's investment darling, and the horrific near meltdown of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plants in Japan.

Nothing as fatal as those events struck the ethanol industry, our third loser, which is more a victim of conventional market forces and uncertainty over government incentives, a key element in the alternative energy sector.

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