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Reducing energy use during the design and construction phase of a new building is almost always easier than retrofitting the building afterwards. There are many techniques that can be used to reduce the amount of energy a building needs. Using efficient systems like LED lighting and heat pumps are obvious.

However, the building architecture itself can be designed to save energy, both without management of control systems (passive technologies), and with controls (active technologies).

Architectural and advanced mechanical systems that should be considered during building design include suc...