page_title: Sustainable architecture
section_title: Sustainable energy use
hierarchical_section_title: Sustainable architecture / Sustainable energy use
caption_attribution_description: Greensburg, Kansas arts center, a LEED Platinum facility integrating solar panels and wind generators for energy self-sufficiency. Photo taken December 31, 2009.
context_page_description: Sustainable architecture is architecture that seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings by efficiency and moderation in the use of materials, energy, and development space and the ecosystem at large. Sustainable architecture uses a conscious approach to energy and ecological conservation in the design of the built environment.
  The idea of sustainability, or ecological design, is to ensure that our use of presently available resources does not end up having detrimental effects to our collective well-being or making it impossible to obtain resources for other applications in the long run.
context_section_description: Energy efficiency over the entire life cycle of a building is the most important goal of sustainable architecture. Architects use many different passive and active techniques to reduce the energy needs of buildings and increase their ability to capture or generate their own energy. To minimize cost and complexity, sustainable architecture prioritizes passive systems to take advantage of building location with incorporated architectural elements, supplementing with renewable energy sources and then fossil fuel resources only as needed. Site analysis can be employed to optimize use of exploit local environmental resources such as daylight and ambient wind for heating and ventilation.
caption: Following its destruction by a tornado in 2007, the town of Greensburg, Kansas (United States) elected to rebuild to highly stringent LEED Platinum environmental standards.  Shown is the town's new art center, which integrates its own solar panels and wind generators for energy self-sufficiency.
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