After their town was leveled by an EF-5 tornado in 2007, Greensburg came together and made the decision to rebuild their town to be safer, stronger and sustainable for the future. With most of the city’s structures and the electricity infrastructure destroyed, Greensburg’s residents and community leaders recognized that they had a particular opportunity to start again with a new plan for an improved community and a new way of living within it.
The U.S. Department of Energy came to Greensburg along with the experts from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to assist Greensburg with reaching their energy goals. In 2008, A Master Plan was created which states that, “A truly sustainable community is one that balances the economic, ecological and social impacts of development.”
Many of Greensburg’s goals focused on creating a healthy, strong and open community including the following: “[To] Build a variety of durable, healthy, energy-efficient houses and buildings… Look to renewable sources of energy, such as Greensburg’s plentiful wind…Treat each drop of water as a precious resource… Remain affordable. Integrating Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency into planning.”
Their plan included 100% renewable electricity by harnessing the abundant wind and solar energy in the area. The city of Greensburg has rebuilt every building to LEED-platinum standards and all city streetlights have been converted to LEDs. The city has a curbside recycling program and collects rainwater for irrigation and grey water for toilets as well as having the world’s largest hand dug well.
The strong winds that blow across Greensburg, KS now power the 12.5 megawatt community through the Greensburg Wind Farm which not only produces enough electricity to power every home, business and municipal building in Greensburg, but also produces more energy than the town can consume and is capable of powering surrounding towns as well.
The central goal for the Department of Energy was to create a model of energy efficiency and renewable energy that would initially help Greensburg, but also act as an example, which could be consistently replicated for disaster relief and recovery and indeed any new construction efforts across the country. The people of Greensburg had a vision not only for their own community but for the larger world in hopes that their example, born out of disaster, would serve as inspiration for communities nation and world wide that renewable and economic sustainability can go hand in hand. They have proved that acommunity can choose to put the health and well being of their people first and thrive in the process.