History


New: Ravi Malhotra founded ICAST in 2002 as an initiative in the Engineering School at 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.

Three people having a conversation outside.

ICAST Founder Ravi Malhotra discusses affordable housing retrofits alongside US Senator Michael Bennet.

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. ICAST engineers have created feasibility studies for the Rocky Mountain region on the creation of biodiesel plants, 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 feasibility on the launch of solar-thermal power plants in Pakistan.

Solar panels on a clear day in a field of tall grasses and flowers.

Solar panels constructed as part of an ICAST training program in Tunisia.

Despite the varied and nonlinear initiatives ICAST has pursued, it has always stayed on the path of its mission. This mission, integral to ICAST’s identify, is to provide economic, environmental, and social benefits to communities in a manner that builds local capacity. In the pursuit of this mission ICAST has innovated, collaborated, and creatively adapted to maximize impact.

Now, ICAST’s focus is delivering 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.