Along a bend in the Buffalo River here, an enormous steel and concrete structure is rising, soon to house one of the country’s largest solar panel factories. Just to the south, in the rotting guts of the old Bethlehem Steel plant in Lackawanna, where a dozen wind turbines already harness the energy blowing off Lake Erie, workers are preparing to install a big new solar array. And in Lockport, to the north, Yahoo recently expanded a data and customer service center, attracted by the region’s cheap, clean power generated by Niagara Falls.

After decades of providing the punch line in jokes about snowstorms, also-ran sports teams and urban decline, the Queen City of the Lakes is suddenly experiencing something new: an economic turnaround, helped by the unlikely sector of renewable energy.

Buffalo’s development as an industrial powerhouse has its roots in the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. But the Niagara Falls hydroelectric power plant — one of the country’s first — started the city’s electrification and helped accelerate its growth into an affluent world-class manufacturing center.

Despite the long decline, much of that infrastructure remains — including transmission and rail lines, professional schools and fine art museums. All of that, along with generous government subsidies, is proving attractive to new industries like clean energy and advanced manufacturing. Perhaps the most potent symbol of Buffalo’s shifting economy is the green energy complex on Lake Erie, where the new solar array is joining a wind farm completed in 2012. The spinning blades of 14 turbines provide a clean-energy backdrop for the long-shuttered steel mill.

Electricity from the wind turbines, enough to power roughly 15,000 homes, is under contract to a local utility, Constellation Energy Resources. No less important is the impending arrival of SolarCity, the country’s leading rooftop solar installer, which received incentives worth about $750 million to build its panel factory here. Once it is up and running, it is expected to provide roughly 1,500 jobs on site and support 1,500 more among area suppliers.

The New York Times brings you more on how renewable energy and its promises are drawing people back to Buffalo.