Picture a future where renewable energy is the primary source rather than the alternative. Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on homes and businesses are the norm and each house down the block has a driveway by day that becomes an electric vehicle charging station at night. Everything around you is getting power from the sun, from streetlights, to street signs, to computers.

This is the vision of Hudson Valley Clean Energy (HVCE), a renewable energy company, and The Solar Energy Consortium in Kingston New York, a nonprofit research and advocacy group that’s doing everything it can to promote the adoption of solar technologies. Both are located in New York, a leading state in the U.S. for solar equipment manufacturing and distribution. How we get to the future that these two groups envision, according to the state’s industry leaders, has much to do with our ability to manufacture the necessary products right here in the U.S.

New York, like the U.S., is competing with manufacturing giants Germany and China, both of which have over the past decade made sizable gains in the global market for solar energy equipment. Both countries have enacted national renewable energy laws that both encouraged domestic demand for solar panels and helped boost exports.

For its part, the Solar Energy Consortium is making headway, taking over a vacant, former IBM building in the mid-Hudson Valley and helping to move 38 renewable energy companies into the complex. The companies include solar panel manufacturers and solar appliance developers. For Petra Klein, Vice President of Technology and Strategy for the Solar Energy Consortium, the strategy is simple:

“If you want to grow the solar industry here, you have to produce the equipment here, you have to use the equipment here, and you have to deploy the product here. And then you have to develop an export market.”

Those in the Hudson Valley region are hoping local efforts yield worldly results. According to Record Online, the region created 150 new solar jobs in 2009, and expects to make that figure hit 1,000 by the end of the 2011 calendar year.

The numbers could hit the sun if New York’s legislature passes the New York Solar Jobs and Development Act of 2010, a bill that, if passed, would require the installation of 5,000 megawatts (MW) of solar power statewide by 2o25. The New York Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) says such a bill would create 22,000 new green jobs statewide and generate $20 billion in investment over the next 15 years.

Government officials are currently brainstorming options to make the U.S. manufacturing market more competitive. Tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investment capital hinge on whether or not the United States can develop a sustainable renewable energy manufacturing industry. With unemployment stuck stubbornly high across the U.S., we can only hope all avenues and possibilities will be explored.