Mark Lannaman - Saporta Report
Jul 12, 2024
The U.S. Department of Energy announced three student-led teams as winners for the final phase of its Collegiate Track of the American-Made Community Energy Innovation Prize, including one team from Atlanta.
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The U.S. Department of Energy announced three student-led teams as winners for the final phase of its Collegiate Track of the American-Made Community Energy Innovation Prize, including one team from Atlanta.
This final phase called the IMPACT phase, awarded the three teams’ community partners a total of $100,000. The pitch to be selected as a finalist took place on June 25 in Washington, D.C., where two teams from Texas were also selected as winners. The competition held two phases prior to this final one.
The competition is a function of the Justice40 Initiative, which seeks to ensure that certain federal investments in climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, and other investments “flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.”
The winning Atlanta team, titled Georgia Tech Zero Energy Collaborations (GTZEC, also known as Solar Decathlon at Georgia Tech), was focused on building net-zero homes — or homes that are effectively carbon neutral by removing as much greenhouse gas from the atmosphere as they put out — in Westside Atlanta and training professionals in this space. It was a partnership between Georgia Tech, the Westside Future Fund, and the Lifecycle Building Center.
Jackie Zong, a student at Georgia Tech and member of the winning Georgia Tech team, said that after becoming engaged with the sustainability world through an internship, he became inspired to pursue this project.
The awards ceremony and red carpet for student competitors and other attendees of the 2024 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathalon in Golden, Colorado. (Photo from Jackie Zong.)
“After my freshman year, I had the opportunity to intern with a local nonprofit, Lifecycle Building Center,” Zong said, adding that as part of his internship, he established their first workforce training program. “I learned that energy burden housing cost is such a big issue in Westside Atlanta. Georgia Tech is just blocks away and is one of the leading universities in the U.S.; I [felt] like Georgia Tech [was] not doing enough for the communities nearby, and that’s when I got the inspiration.”
In phase one of the competition, Zong and his team were awarded $15,000. Between phase two and now phase three, the group was awarded $50,000, which went directly to their community partners.
Atlanta is one of several cities with an unusually high energy burden — the percentage of household income that goes to energy bills — which was another motivation for Zong and his team. To combat this and to help reduce carbon emissions, the team designed the net-zero winning house — but the impact goes beyond that.
“With the technology today, it’s feasible to design a net zero energy home,” Zong said. “But what we’re really trying to do is make sustainability replicable and affordable for members in the Westside community.”
The winning project house is just a rendering at the moment, but it was modeled on an actual house in Westside Atlanta and will start to be transformed into the winning project as early as Fall 2024, Zong said. After that, the home will be sold to a legacy resident in the Westside community.
The project reused materials whenever possible, along with a host of passive design strategies to increase energy efficiency, while also ensuring the exterior of the house maintains the look of the neighborhood.
Admittedly, Zong said, the upfront cost of a development like this is more expensive than traditional methods, but the team is planning to get affordable materials from Lifecycle Building Center and partner with top notch manufacturers. Zong is convinced that over the life cycle of the project, it makes sense — both from a social responsibility standpoint and a reduced energy bill cost standpoint.
Ultimately, Zong said he hopes that this site could serve as a design guide for future developments in the Westside. The team is currently open to partnerships for the materials needed and donations towards the project.