Sustainability Club Wins at Student Competition to Promote Energy-Efficient Buildings

Today, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the winners of the Better Buildings Case Competition. The CU Denver Sustainability Club was among the winners.

The Better Buildings Case Competition provides the next generation of engineers, entrepreneurs and policymakers with skills and experience to start careers in clean energy. Student teams competed to find the best solutions to the energy efficiency challenges presented in real-world case studies.

The CU Denver team, comprised of six students from the College of Engineering and Applied Science, the College of Architecture and Planning and the Business School, received the most innovative award for their case study for HEI Hotels and Resorts. The team presented three options to help hotel operators reduce their energy costs by adjusting their operations, which will save energy and allow the hotels to improve performance with no investment by the franchisor.

Engineering student Tyler Huggins, the leader of the CU Denver team, said the project was a true collaboration and the biggest challenge was making a hotel more efficient with no money. Huggins said, “We were able to get creative and find some low-hanging fruit. There were some behavioral changes and minor operation changes that amounted to significant savings for the hotel.”

Other contest winners included Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, The George Washington University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California at Berkeley and University of Southern California.

Read the entire press release here.