3 Student Chapters Among Winning Teams in 2022 Solar Decathlon

Sustainability and Green Building
Published

The 2022 Solar Decathlon Design Challenge — a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) collegiate competition that tasks students with designing low-carbon, high-performance buildings powered by renewable energy — celebrated its 20th anniversary with a standout lineup of 20 winning projects across multiple categories.

Among the winning projects, which were selected from a pool of 54 Design Challenge finalists, three NAHB student chapters placed in three separate categories:

Top honors went to Georgia Institute of Technology team for the Residential Grand Winner and the University of Arizona team for the Commercial Grand Winner.

See a full list of winners from this year’s competition.

NAHB congratulates all the student teams and faculty for their hard work, innovative solutions, outstanding projects and, most of all, for leading the charge in the next generation of housing.

“NAHB is proud to be a longtime supporting partner of the Solar Decathlon,” stated NAHB Jerry Konter. “It is truly inspiring to see the hard work, creative high-performance designs, and innovative ideas of the student competition teams. The program not only promotes and showcases sustainable building practices, but also helps prepare the future generation of the green building and design industry.”

Learn more about how solar has continued to grow in this q-and-a with seasoned Solar Decathlon judge and NAHB member Ray Tonjes.

To stay current on the high-performance residential building sector, with tips on water efficiency, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, and other building science strategies, follow NAHB’s Sustainability and Green Building efforts on Twitter.

Subscribe to NAHBNow

Log in or create account to subscribe to notifications of new posts.

Log in to subscribe

Latest from NAHBNow

Sponsored Content

Jan 20, 2026

Smart Sourcing, Smarter Basis: How AI Is Changing Land Acquisition

For decades, the process of screening off-market sites has remained painfully slow. But a shift is happening as top-tier land teams are moving away from manual data aggregation and toward AI-driven workflows to eliminate non-viable sites in minutes.

Economics | Material Costs

Jan 16, 2026

Building Material Price Growth Remains Elevated Despite a Sluggish Market

Residential building material price growth continued to climb toward the end of 2025, even as the new home construction market showed signs of slowing.

View all

Latest Economic News

Economics

Jan 20, 2026

New Single-Family Home Size Trends: Third Quarter 2025

New single-family home size has been generally falling since 2015 as a response to declining affordability conditions. An exception occurred when new home size increased in 2021 as interest rates reached historic lows. However, as interest rates increased in 2022 and 2023, and housing affordability worsened, the demand for home size has trended lower.

Economics

Jan 20, 2026

Third Quarter 2025 Multifamily Construction Data

According to NAHB analysis of quarterly Census data, the count of multifamily, for-rent housing starts increased during the third quarter of 2025. For the quarter, 119,000 multifamily residences started construction. Of this total, 114,000 were built-for-rent.

Economics

Jan 19, 2026

Soft Conditions for Single-Family Built-for-Rent

Single-family built-for-rent construction fell back in the third quarter of 2025, as a higher cost of financing and increased multifamily supply crowded out development.