Ravi Malhotra founded ICAST in 2002 as an initiative of the Engineering School of the University of Colorado at Boulder. ICAST registered as an independent organization shortly after and moved to the Colorado School of Mines campus before establishing its Denver office in 2007.

From its inception, ICAST has worked to provide triple bottom line impacts via sustainable solutions for underserved communities. Initially, ICAST used a service learning model as the keystone for all projects, where students and others entering the workforce were responsible for executing projects that were conceptualized, monitored, and evaluated by engineers, professors, and executive leaders.

ICAST has established a wide variety of successful programs.  ICAST founded a solar power company, Main Street Power, which completed over $200 million of solar PV projects before being acquired by AES Corporation in 2015. ICAST engineers have authored feasibility studies on the creation of biodiesel plants in the Rocky Mountain region and worked with the USDA to train business owners on sustainable technology in rural Colorado.

In the past, ICAST worked internationally to develop a three-year job skills program in Tunisia, providing training on sustainable technology and renewable energy to local business leaders. It launched an initiative to design, develop, and install Anaerobic Digesters at dairy farms in Tanzania and Kenya. ICAST has also researched the feasibility of launching solar-thermal power plants in Pakistan.

Now, ICAST delivers green technology solutions to individuals and families in US multifamily affordable housing properties and disadvantaged communities. It leverages federal, multi-state, statewide, and utility programs to design, manage, and scale its services. With an ever-growing team of committed experts, ICAST has dramatically expanded its reach in underserved populations and created a standard for other organizations that wish to do the same.

Despite the varied and nonlinear initiatives ICAST has pursued, it has always stayed on the path of its mission to provide economic, environmental, and social benefits to underserved communities in a manner that builds local capacity.