On Feb. 21 at 12:20 p.m., the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon Competition was minutes away from the first presentations of the semifinal round when clubs from across the nation would share their work. Northeastern’s Solar Decathlon’s team had prepared their net-zero retrofit design for the Evangelical Ethiopian Church in Boston. Then, the teams received an unexpected email.

“The Solar Decathlon Semifinal Competition Event, initially planned for February 21 and 22, 2025, has been postponed,” the email signed by “The Solar Decathlon Organizers” read. “We will be back in touch with additional details as soon as possible.”

The email informing the team of the competition’s postponement was after it was announced the Trump administration would freeze $50 billion in Department of Energy, or DOE, funding for programs including clean energy initiatives. The Decathlon had aligned itself with clean energy causes, writing on its website that the competition has, “inspired thousands of students worldwide to enter the clean energy workforce since its inception in 2002.”

Northeastern’s club leaders David Tellez Sanchez and Caleb Hagner said they believe the decathlon is fully canceled, as the team has not heard anything further from the Solar Decathlon organizers since Feb. 21. Before the official postponement, the club had been receiving emails informing them that due to high turnover, the competition was experiencing delays in responding to competitors. 

Northeastern’s team submitted their plans Feb. 18 and were set to present Feb. 22 after preparing a 30-minute talk. The first groups were scheduled to begin Feb. 21 at 12:30 p.m. but the postponement was sent out at 12:20 p.m.

“We’ve received zero emails, zero information, zero website updates since. There’s been no word,” said Hagner, a second-year chemical engineering and environmental engineering combined major.

The Northeastern team — composed of prospective civil and structural engineers and architects passionate about equity and a climate-friendly future — work annually to build a near-net-zero redesign to submit to the DOE’s competition. This year, they worked with the Ethiopian Evangelical Church in Boston on a retrofit to enhance the organization’s Roxbury structure and energy efficiency. 

“Our goal this year is trying to show for an underserved community that net-zero retrofit, green retrofit, is not only affordable but it’s also feasible,” said Tellez Sanchez, who is a third-year civil engineering major. 

The competition is “where interdisciplinary teams create sustainable, high-performance building designs that address real-world issues such as existing building retrofits, community impacts, affordability and resilience,” the website reads. Teams of students from all over the world participate, hoping to gain useful experience in sustainable engineering and architecture.

“[Students] get involved because not only do they want to learn but because they want to just give something to people,” Tellez Sanchez said. He said he sees the competition as not only the reason the club exists but a “driving force” for that mission. Doing away with the Solar Decathlon competition will “certainly impact the amount of future innovation that happens in this space,” he said. 

In the past, the club has chosen to plan within the parameters of a Boston parking garage or otherwise empty space, but this year it was connected to a local church in need of repair by a Northeastern faculty member and seized the opportunity to branch out. After working to solve drainage, temperature and water damage issues in the former auto-repair-shop-turned church, the club outlined plans that could potentially save the church thousands of dollars in the construction process. 

Those plans still exist, but the future of the team that made them is uncertain. 

After news of the competition’s postponement spread, a petition began to circulate urging government officials to revive the competition published by Dorothy Gerring, an associate professor of architecture at Pennsylvania College of Technology. According to the petition, the challenge had a total of 122 teams from 93 collegiate institutions registered, representing 19 countries. 

While the DOE doesn’t fund participating clubs directly — although it offers grants for travel costs that groups can apply for — it does employ federal workers that facilitate the competition and give out technical feedback and sustainable educational content. Northeastern’s chapter of the club itself receives up to $4,000 from private sponsors excited about the prospect of a more experienced workforce.

While around $3,000 of that is going toward airfare and lodging for the competition’s finals, around $1,000 goes toward food for the club’s speaker seminars, software licenses, office supplies and community green building conference attendance, Hagner said. 

The club can continue its plans for the church’s retrofit, but club leaders worry that the club will lose funding from its sponsors if the competition doesn’t return. 

“A lot of private companies put a lot of money in this competition because not only is it funding what are going to be future people who are going to work in this industry, but it also takes off the burden from the federal government like financing this program,” Tellez Sanchez said. 

When the presidential election was called in November 2024, the club was already bracing for the worst, Hagner said. The club’s goal has been to push for housing equity by providing affordable housing to transient communities. The Solar Decathlon competition itself focuses on reducing carbon intensity and increasing energy efficiency with a focus on equity, key words the Trump administration is targeting.

“We’re just put in a spot where we’re the prime target for this administration,” Tellez Sanchez said. “Because we’re talking about clean energy, where they don’t believe in climate change. We’re talking about [diversity, equity and inclusion], something that’s so against what [Trump is] trying to do.”

The impact might not be immediate on the industry, but each year more alumni from the club go into the private sector with a passion for sustainability given to them by the competition. “You think about the generation that’s going to miss out on that,” Hagner said. 

A silver lining, the team leaders said, is that the club can work on its project with the church on its own timeline. 

“This sucks, but we’re going to make the best of it,” Tellez Sanchez said. “We’ve made a commitment to work with this church.”