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The United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm announced the winners of the 2021 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Decathlon, a competition that challenges architecture and engineering college students from around the world to design and construct high-performance buildings powered by renewable energy. 72 competing teams hailed from 12 countries and designed energy-efficient residential and commercial spaces, nine of which were constructed and presented in the Solar Decathlon Virtual Village on the National Mall, a first of its kind, in Washington, D.C.
The Solar Decathlon aims to promote student innovation, STEM education, and workforce development opportunities in the architecture and construction industry. The competition has been ongoing since 2002, and since then, more than 20,000 students have shared their innovative concepts. The Decathlon is divided into two separate challenges: The Design Challenge is a one-to-two-semester, design-only competition, whi
Our fight against the climate crisis is a lot like a decathlon, with all kinds of individual contests we need to get through and we can t win unless we do well in them all, said Secretary Granholm. Today s decathletes are tomorrow s architects and engineers who are going to help us achieve President Biden s ambitious and achievable clean energy goals and build our net-zero future. I can t wait to see their big ideas come to life in neighborhoods across the country and around the world.
According to DOE analysis, buildings currently account for approximately 74% of electricity use, 39% of total energy use, and 35% of carbon emissions in the United States. There are more than 125 million buildings in the nation that need retrofits to achieve the Administration s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 which President Biden s American Jobs Plan proposes to address. The Solar Decathlon supports a key strategy to bring that vision to life, by building a pipeline of energy-savvy workers p