Empire State Development Corporation

The tentative greening of Greater Buffalo was a favorite subject of mine in my early days at gbNYC, mostly because I'm a sucker for underdogs and any good news -- be it about the ultra-moribund Buffalo Bills or an attempt to remake the city as a solar manufacturing hub -- about Greater Buffalo always kind of counts as a man-bites-dog story. The just-reopened Globe Specialty Metals plant in Niagara Falls isn't an especially green building in its own right; this is a metal manufacturer, after all. But it's certainly green around the edges: the Globe plant is powered by 40 megawatts of low-cost hydroelectric power courtesy of the New York Power Authority, and will specialize in making high-grade silicon for use in solar panels.