City dwellers driving past the expansive cotton fields and scattered farmhouses along Highway 43 to Corcoran might get the feeling they’ve left California. A haze of dust, bugs and little particles of cow dung blanket the road between Fresno and Bakersfield. Even on a nice day, wiping debris from a car windshield begins to feel futile.

An influx of green manufacturing companies and a burgeoning renewable-energy sector is creating the critical mass Solano County needs to usher in a new era of competitive economic growth.

By most accounts, today’s workforce is more productive than ever, suggesting that technologies meant to help us do more in less time are working.

If your IT room is starting to look like a scene out of “Sanford and Son,” you’re not alone. In 2010, American consumers and businesses unloaded 40 million computers onto recyclers, landfills and the refurbished market, the Golisano Institute for Sustainability in Rochester, N.Y., reports. Some estimates show, however, that millions more are idling in homes and offices because owners simply don’t know what to do with them.

Beutler Air Conditioning and Plumbing may be a poster-business for the rise and fall — and re-birth — of Sacramento’s economy. Rick Wylie, president of Beutler, says the 65-year-old Sacramento company was probably saved by its diversification, partially into green energy models.

For more than a decade Meg Arnold has been actively supporting technology commercialization and entrepreneurship throughout the Capital Region.

Tablet computers are becoming the tool of choice in multiple industries, adding convenience to simple tasks such as note taking, to more complex operations such as tracking sales. Tablets haven’t replaced laptops yet, but sales trends favor the handheld devices.

Developers looking to build in the Capital Region are finding cash in emerging green-financing products.

At a conference in China in November 2010, Harris Lewin and Richard Michelmore approached Jian Wang, the president of global genetics company BGI, with an informal question: Could they interest the world’s largest genomics research institute in building a lab at UC Davis?

If a civil engineering firm were to measure a section of a busy street in the Capital Region for an upcoming project, they could survey the road — even during rush hour — with ease, using an advanced laser scanner. With this new technology, an engineer can capture every detail of the street and even take measurements as if the traffic had disappeared.