You might expect to find a toilet that belongs in an outhouse at a state park. But not inside the shiny new $2 million Visitors Center.

The toilets at the new Sweetwater Creek State Park Visitors Center near Lithia Springs look like normal indoor facilities — stalls and all — until you notice the seat covers a black hole and there's no handle for flushing. Waste falls down into a large bin full of wood chips, where it eventually winds up as mulch somewhere in the park.

Louie Favorite/AJC (ENLARGE)

The visitors center in the Sweetwater Creek State Park is certified as one of the top 30 buildings in the world in energy conservation. Its architect was Daniel Gerding.

(ENLARGE)

• Policy leader tackles state's energy needs

The unconventional bathrooms are just one way the Sweetwater visitors center stands out as a model of energy efficiency. Opened in July, the sleekly modern, sun-filled building is one of only 30 in the world to achieve the platinum certification level from the U.S. Green Building Council. Platinum is the highest rating offered through LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the benchmark for environmentally friendly construction.

Buildings like the Sweetwater facility that save electricity, use less water and improve air quality are popping up all over the country, but are still the anomaly. Since 2000, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources has become a national leader in the green building movement with six buildings certified by the national Green Building Council, including a golf clubhouse.

"We are stewards of the natural resources. We need to be walking the talk," said Becky Kelley, director of Georgia State Parks & Historic Sites. "Look at our challenges with water and energy. Anything we can do to use less resources, the better off we are going to be this generation and the next."

It's exactly what the State Energy Strategy for Georgia, submitted to Gov. Sonny Perdue last month, envisions for Georgia. The strategy recommends state and local governments take the lead in building more energy-efficient buildings as part of an overall effort to meet at least some of our future energy needs by using less — less electricity, less natural gas and less water.

It also recommends the state offer tax incentives to encourage home and business owners to build better insulated buildings, make use of natural light, install solar panels and buy plumbing fixtures that use less water and Energy Star appliances that use less electricity.

Other states have set goals of reducing their energy needs by up to 30 percent in 10 years, and the strategy recommends Georgia set its own goal.

The energy strategy, a 138-page document prepared by the state staff and approved by a 22-member Energy Policy Council of businesspeople, academics, industry representatives and lobbyists, sets two other priorities for Georgia: increasing renewable energy, including vehicle fuels made from wood chips and chicken byproducts; and increased energy production from cleaner coal-fired plants and nuclear plants.

So far, Perdue has acted on one of the dozens of recommendations in the strategy. He introduced legislation that would give a sales tax exemption on the construction of alternative fuel facilities that use Georgia-grown products.

RK Stewart, president of the American Institute of Architects and principal at Gensler, an international architectural firm, said energy-efficient buildings have been overlooked in recent discussions about energy. Both President George Bush in his State of the Union speech and Perdue in his State of the State address talked about energy, but their focus was on finding alternatives to foreign oil. It's not hard to understand why. Creating homegrown products as substitutes for oil would decrease this nation's dependence on the Middle East.

But Stewart said the energy equation also includes buildings, which in Georgia are heated, cooled and lit mostly by burning coal. While coal is far cheaper than oil, and is plentiful in the United States, it is also the No. 1 source of greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are contributing to global warming. Burning coal also produces other harmful side effects to human health, from air pollution to mercury.

"Buildings are the real opportunity to change the way this nation uses energy," said Stewart, who works in San Francisco. "The opportunities there are so huge."

Lee Thomas, the retired president and chief operating officer for Georgia-Pacific Corp. who led the Energy Policy Council that developed the strategy, said he sees the document as a conversation starter, with a lot of work ahead before real changes are made in the way this state uses energy.

"How do we really put practices in place that will assure state government is looking at energy efficiency aggressively?" Thomas asked. "A lot of it will require legislative approaches. ... We were trying to say this is the direction we need to go to rather than prescription exactly."

Thomas said state and local governments should consider the total life cycle costs of new buildings, from construction to ongoing maintenance and utility bills. "Even if [an energy-efficient building] costs more up front, it will pay off in the long run in terms of total cost for energy."

Sweetwater's construction cost, according to the state parks chief engineer, David Freedman, and Sweetwater's architect, Daniel Gerding of Gerding Collaborative in Atlanta, was on par with a conventional building. Kelley, the parks director, said the overall costs for the DNR's LEED buildings have been within about 2 percent of conventional buildings. But the savings on utility and water bills will keep adding up over time, they said.

Sweetwater Creek State Conservation Park Visitors Center cost $175 per square foot to build. A similar commercial building built using conventional techniques generally costs between $150 and $200 a square foot.

The 8,743-square-foot Sweetwater facility uses about half the energy of a regular building its size — the annual energy savings are expected to be $6,102.

It's built into a slope, a sort of manmade cave that keeps the building cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Part of the roof is landscaped — a natural insulator — and part is covered in solar panels.

Most of the water used in and around the building, to wash hands and water plants, comes from rainwater collection.

The main attraction at Sweetwater, about 18 miles west of Atlanta, has been the ruins of a textile mill burned during the Civil War. Don Scarbrough Jr., the park's interpretive ranger, said people now are showing up just to tour the visitors center to learn about the energy-efficient design.

"I love it," Scarbrough

said.