Sustainable Industries Daily Update

The Tesla Model S "grins" at "range anxiety."

We've got a mixed bag of sustainable energy and sustainable transportation news today. First up though is a spat over the term "Range Anxiety." Seems GM is trying to patent the term so it can use it when marketing its upcoming Chevy Volt--an electric car with a back-up gasoline engine. The company's argument is that consumers are not willing to buy an all-electric car if they think they'll "get stranded on the way home from work." All-electric car maker Tesla doesn't see the problem though. In response to an article on the topic on Wired, Tesla VP of Communications, Ricardo Reyes said, "By all means, GM can have 'range anxiety.' To Roadster owners, the term is as irrelevant as 'gas stop' or 'smog check.' We are, however, looking into trademarking 'Tesla grin.'"

Tesla might be onto something. A new report from Pike Research says that the global market for plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles is expected to reach 3.2 million units by 2015.

As we all know, a robust EV market is going to require an even more robust and smart grid. Two big players in the smart-grid market--Cisco and Itron--are working together to create communication protocol standards and technologies for the smart grid. Specifically, the two companies will develop a standards-based, highly secure technology for full IPv6 implementation of field area communications to support smart metering, intelligent distribution automation and interfaces to the customer premise.

The world will also need a whole lot more power to run all those EVs. Some say that means burning a lot more coal (and somehow doing that cleanly) and a lot of nuclear power plants. That may be but the nation's largest nuclear power plant operator, Exelon, sees opportunity in wind energy. The company purchased the renewable energy unit of Deere & Co. for $860 million.

In other news, Seattle-based CleanScapes is the number one company in Environmental Services and ninth company in Seattle on the Inc. 500 growing companies list. We profiled CleanScapes in 2009.