$11 Billion in Clean Energy Later, Chris Castro Says We’re Solving the Wrong Problem

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Mike Collignon: Hello and welcome to the impact series on the Green Builder Media Network. I'm your host, my Collignon. On this podcast, I'll have one on one conversations with leaders and innovators from a wide variety of disciplines. We'll talk about how they got into their field, the lessons they've learned, and advice they have for future generations of leaders. Today I get to talk with Chris Castro, and he has already had an incredible career, and he's not even 40 years old yet.

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Mike Collignon: While still in college, Chris co-founded ideas for us, a global UN accredited nonprofit advancing community led sustainable projects and fleet farming and urban farming social enterprise, transforming underutilized land into edible landscapes throughout central Florida. He spent almost a decade serving the city of Orlando, Florida, where he held various roles, including their Director of Sustainability and Resilience, and was a senior advisor to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer.

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Mike Collignon: During his time with the city. He started Citizen Energy, a clean energy consulting firm specializing in commercial and multi-family buildings. Now, Chris left the city for good reason, as he was a presidential appointee for the Biden-Harris administration, where he managed a variety of programs at the U.S. Department of Energy. Currently, Chris is the founding director and chief sustainability officer for Climate First Bank.

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Mike Collignon: Chris, welcome to the impact series.

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Chris Castro: Great to be here with you, Mike. Wonderful.

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Mike Collignon: Well, I'm so happy to have you on here, Chris. You've packed a lot into your career, and you're arguably not even to the halfway mark. Take us back to the beginning, though. You're getting your degree from the University of Central Florida in environmental studies and policy, focusing on energy and sustainability. I've got to think your passion for this field didn't start once you got into higher education.

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Chris Castro: No it didn't, Mike. Actually, the story is I got to UCF fully undeclared. I was a student when I was growing up. My my mom had put me in the International Baccalaureate program. Growing up in South Florida, growing up. Born and raised in Miami, IB and being bilingual was just part of the culture, right? And so she really wanted to make sure that that I continue that culture as a Cuban-American.

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Chris Castro: And I was very grateful for it. Not only was it an incredible education, and it gave me this kind of work ethic and discipline that I don't think others and just traditional public education were able to get. But that gave me a free ride to a number of Florida schools. I remember getting into the University of Miami and I was like, that's interesting.

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Chris Castro: But they didn't give me any, you know, resources. UF, FSU and UCF was kind of this new emerging. I mean, it had been around, but from from our perspective, it was kind of an emerging college and university that was, you know, getting more and more on the map and seemed like it was ripe for opportunity to be able to shape, to be able to, to really influence.

00:02:53:12 - 00:03:18:18
Chris Castro: And I was undeclared and at the time was very passionate about surfing. In fact, I, I relate my love for the oceans to my foundation of why I even got into this space. Growing up in South Florida, you're often either at the beach or going down to the Florida Keys. I did a lot of snorkeling and scuba diving and did a lot of fishing and surfing.

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Chris Castro: Right around ten years old, my parents took me up to Cocoa Beach for a weekend family weekend, and I got onto a board for the first time. I remember my stepdad pushing me into my first wave, and it was just it was a game changer for me. It was like me interacting with nature in a in the most visceral way.

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Chris Castro: And I was sold. I was completely transformed. And fast forward to, you know, I graduate high school and I'm trying to figure out what to do. And UCF happened to be guess what, really close to Cocoa Beach and Central Florida. And so me and a bunch of my buddies that I surfed with happened to get into UCF and we said, all right, it's meant to be.

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Chris Castro: We're just going to go we're going to figure out where to go. And and so yeah, long story short, I ended up trying to navigate around where I wanted to land, what do I want it to do? And of course, that's really difficult for a 17 year old kid to figure out, like, what are we going to do over the long run?

00:04:08:21 - 00:04:32:08
Chris Castro: I was fortunate to also grow up in a family business. My stepdad owns a palm tree nursery and a landscape business, and so I grew up literally growing trees and getting my hands dirty on a on a regular basis. Right. And I think that that thought was, oh, when I get to UCF, maybe I'd just do the Business Administration degree and go back and help the family business.

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Chris Castro: Right. Keep keep running the shop. That was my initial thought. Not not a lot. And I one of these general education courses right. These Jeanette courses I stumbled into was called environmental sociology. I was fascinated by just the topic that we were learning around this intersection between people and the environment. And that really gave birth to really a mind blowing, you know, semester.

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Chris Castro: Every single class. I remember Doctor Penelope Cannon just it was just like blowing my mind on our inner, on our intersections with everything from how we grow our food and the impacts of agriculture. Have our energy system right, water, ecological and our connection to it, our waste and and essentially how, you know, we needed to make this pivot towards more sustainable development.

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Chris Castro: And I remember calling my mom shortly after that course, knowing that I had this gut feeling that something in protecting and restoring, regenerating and advancing a more sustainable future for our community and our planet was what I was meant to do. I realized it was my purpose. The reason why I was put onto this planet, and it happened to have this purpose and passion alignment that has quite frankly, been, you know, I've been on this rocket since that day, 18, 18 plus years later.

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Chris Castro: So it's a bit about how I got really into it.

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Mike Collignon: And what a rocket it has been. I mean, obviously you can after hearing that, you can kind of understand where ideas for us was, you know, where it came from and was one of those buddies.

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Chris Castro: Clayton Clayton actually a few a few years later. Yeah. Clayton was at Rollins College and he was one of the environmental leaders at Rollins, which was just like ten miles down the road from UCF, little liberal arts College, where the second largest university in the country. And we're doing all this great work and certainly saw that this was an opportunity for us to come together and really take things to the next level.

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Chris Castro: At that time, ideas was a couple of years old, and we had really just been a student club at UCF, but it wasn't until I connected with Clay when we said, how can we actually scale this? How can I bring this to Rollins? But also how do we make this a movement and and really take it to the next level?

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Chris Castro: But it was all around taking action, right? We had a number of organizations that were focused on advocacy and civil disobedience and trying to raise awareness about about the issues, and that was absolutely critical, and we were joining those efforts. But at the same time, I was going back to my house at the end of those events and saying, like, what's the solution?

00:07:10:12 - 00:07:33:08
Chris Castro: If we're going to be taking down this coal plant? Like, how are we going to sustain ourselves? We still need lights and power. And and so my thought from from the day we were trying to think about ideas for us was, how do we create an organization that helps people take action in advancing sustainability in a meaningful way and make it almost like a sustainability firm, an interdisciplinary organization?

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Chris Castro: People from the education major, people from marketing, communications, engineering, environmental science, all of us coming together to come up with intellectual decisions on environmental awareness solutions. And that became the acronym for ideas. And we said, my goodness, we started literally doing Adopt the Lake and Adopt a Road program. We brought that to the university as an idea to say, listen, we need to be cleaning up our local environments.

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Chris Castro: Nobody is is, you know, ridding these places from from litter. And we want to empower registered student organizations to claim one and adopt one. And sure enough, we took off with that idea. The university installed it, and all of a sudden today, it's, you know, an ongoing effort. And it became a snowball from there. It was tailgate recycling.

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Chris Castro: It was recycling in the dorms. It was writing a grant to add solar on campus. It was starting the campus organic garden, right. It was getting the university to commit to carbon neutrality by 2050. All of these different programs and initiatives that, again, got people involved in moving the needle. And that became kind of, you know, what ideas for us is today.

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Mike Collignon: And talk a little bit about what it has grown into. I mean, it is it is a global organization.

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Chris Castro: It is today, today. We have done projects in over 30 countries around the world, over 300 different communities that we've funded and supported with on the ground action and ideas for us really focuses on these five pillars of sustainability that intersect with our daily lives its energy, water, food, waste and ecology. And those five pillars are how essentially are action projects are organized.

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Chris Castro: And, you know, the interesting thing is in 2012, so we started in June of 2008 and a few years later in 2012, the world is having the largest conference on sustainability, and it was called Rio Plus 20. It was the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit that happened in 1992, when the world defined sustainable development for the first time, meeting the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

00:09:48:00 - 00:10:21:28
Chris Castro: That became the definition of sustainability in the eyes of the UN. And that summit then gave way to this environmental movement, right? 20 years later, now we're in 2012 and ideas for us. I remember late 2011, I was just online late in the early in the morning, stumbled on the ability of applying to become a UN accredited NGO, and this gave us access to high level conversations, negotiations about key things facing the world, and gave our ability of students to have a seat at the table.

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Chris Castro: And I said, this is our ability to make this link. Let's apply. Sure enough, we go through this six month process back and forth with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UN desa, it's called and we became part of Ecosoc, the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, and we're one of the NGOs that make up Ecosoc.

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Chris Castro: So 2012 we get the green light. This was like March. And this Rio Plus 20 summit is happening in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June of that year. And we quickly assemble ourselves and go down for two full weeks. I end up being part of what's called the UN Youth Assembly, which was a group of people under the age of 35 working all around the world on advancing sustainability.

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Chris Castro: And by the way, 2012. This is right when the Millennium Development Goals, the MDGs, are in the process of sunsetting. They started in 2000, they were going to sunset in 2015, and the purpose of this conference was to discuss what the evolution of the global goals were going to be. Well guess what? Colombia is in this room. And they mentioned the Sustainable Development Goals.

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Chris Castro: And it starts going down this path of defining what are the SDGs. What are the 17. It launched the World We Want campaign, which went out to millions of people to kind of prioritize different challenges and opportunities. And it landed on the 17th. And so we were at the ground floor when Sustainable Development Goals were being conceived and having input into them.

00:11:51:14 - 00:12:17:19
Chris Castro: And three years later, at the UN, we're back in the General Assembly getting ratified when the SDGs were approved. So it's been pretty incredible to be part of that engagement and then to then activate ideas for us to be this micro granting philanthropy, basically this organization that's trying to activate communities to advance projects and solutions that help move the needle on the sustainable development goals and document them.

00:12:17:19 - 00:12:41:16
Chris Castro: Capture metrics, report back up to the UN as a credited organization, and really help show that the grassroots actions are just as meaningful as the institutional changes that we need to be making in order to move towards sustainability. So, yeah, today it's incredible to see a network of organization, of chapters of ideas at universities and communities, really all, all around the world.

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Mike Collignon: And it's so prescient in a way, because you talked about, you know, in the beginning you were dealing with, you know, the advocacy angle, the civil disobedience angle, this are still applicable things today, right? Like we're seeing it happen every day in the United States, maybe not always about sustainability, but it's still we're called to action. And there you were setting this up with others obviously too.

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Mike Collignon: But that was at the core of it. It's still relevant.

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Chris Castro: Getting things moving. And that is I mean, we would join all of the different big marches. One of the partnerships that we established early on with ideas for us with was with 350 and back in 2008, 350 was just getting launched, just like ideas for us. And a year later, I remember us being an approved 350 org organizer.

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Chris Castro: And so we were the organization that organized 350 actions across Central Florida. And they held the International Day on Climate Action. And the whole goal was to make the number 350 with a group of people right, in different places all around the world. And we actually held that at the Memory Mall at University of Central Florida. And we got, you know, it was interesting because we got shirts donated from different companies for it.

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Chris Castro: Hundreds of people came out and we had the white shirts and white that said, 350. And then the zero was an earth that was made up of green and blue shirts and people kind of sitting. It was really cool. I still have this photo hanging in my office, and it was, you know, part of the balance of needing to participate in the civil disobedience and raising the awareness, but also waking up the next day and figuring out, all right, what are we going to do tomorrow to fix this?

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Chris Castro: Our campus right now, what are we going to do to actually advance solutions for people to make sustainability the default, the standard on campus. Right. And and so it was this balance of advocacy but also direct action. And we are really known as an eco action organization. Just because that's what we do and what we're known for getting everyday people with their hands dirty, involved in real, you know, tree plantings, mango restorations, organic garden builds, you name it.

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Mike Collignon: Well, and I mean, I can't even imagine your passion combined with Bill McKibben passion, I guess a chance to do a green building media webinar with me once. And yeah, that would be phenomenal.

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Chris Castro: So Bill continues to be, you know, an inspiration, a legend. I consider him a mentor as well in certain respects because, you know, his guide and where he's going now, with the focus on really being hopeful for the transition towards renewable energy is really exciting to. And yeah, we're on the same page about that internal optimist, no doubt.

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Mike Collignon: I do want to spend a moment though, talking about fleet farming, which is a program within ideas still to this day. Correct?

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Chris Castro: Correct. Yeah, it's kind of a wholly owned subsidiary of ideas for us. And, you know, the concept around getting people involved in some of these projects, some of them actually become viable programs that could continue and actually become not just a one time action that we did here, but but evolve into something more. And that's exactly what happened with fleet farming ideas for us.

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Chris Castro: We're known for hosting a monthly event called the Ideas Hive, and it's our way of bringing our community together people of all ages, all disciplines, to come together and actually begin solutions to these problems. And it's really cool. We use breakouts, we use whiteboards. Everybody comes up with draws and paints out different examples we share. We all add value, and then we identify a project that we can move forward and start raising funds for and implement.

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Chris Castro: And that's the whole idea of the ideas. Hive. Well, one day we were talking about obviously, the challenge with our food system, the industrial agricultural complex, the issue of us being so addicted to this, you know, mechanical industrial system that, quite frankly, is taking over our land more and more and it is polluting our planet. It's polluting our health.

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Chris Castro: And the idea that came out of the Ideas hive, that that meeting was the concept of turning neighborhoods into aggregates. That was the big idea. How can we actually tap in to a lot of this underutilized land, whether it's our front or back lawn, whether it's the little side pocket park on the side of the road here, how to or our school garden, how do we start to really activate and we, you know, connected with a local entrepreneur in Orlando.

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Chris Castro: His name is John Rife and he's a founder of East End Market, which is this incredible food hub. And we approached John and we said, John, we had this really great idea, but we need your support. And East End Market would be the perfect partner to help us establish this idea of essentially creating a program where we come in and convert somebody long into an edible landscape edible fruit trees, shrubs, row crops, and be able to maintain that edible landscape for the homeowner.

00:17:50:01 - 00:18:08:18
Chris Castro: As a service, the homeowner can eat as much as they possibly can eat. And we'll take the excess and we'll work with you to process this food and sell it into the local restaurants in East End Market, as well as the surrounding community. And that became the idea. And sure enough, we just started. We started with my house as plot number one.

00:18:08:20 - 00:18:33:08
Chris Castro: We started with a plot at East End Market, and East End gave us a quarter acre in front of the market, right off of the road to be front and center as like the poster of what we stand for. And fleet farming was the entity that was building it and maintaining it. And we just started hosting a bike ride every weekend on a Sunday morning called The Swarm, kind of like bees swarming around the neighborhood.

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Chris Castro: Well, we got on bikes and we were swarming around the neighborhood, and the idea was to help build new plots and maintain current plots that were participating in this program and create this hyper local food system. Right? Literally within a five mile or less radius, we were activating these lawns and we were using bikes to get around and maintain zero emission agriculture.

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Chris Castro: Right. The whole concept of addressing the climate through a innovative organic farming solution. So long story short, we're now 12 years into the launch of Fleet Farming. We launched this in February of 2014, and today it is a, you know, self-sustaining subsidiary of ideas. For us, it has its own staff, it has its own equipment. It runs basically like its own entity, and it provides excess revenues into the mothership of ideas for us so that we can continue to contribute to more grants and more school gardens and the like.

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Chris Castro: Right, and feed back in to the system. And the hope is that we build more fleet farms of the world, right? You mentioned Citizen Energy earlier. That was a spin out of ideas for us as well. That became its own small LLC, small energy consulting firm. And in the five pillars, our goal is to kind of create these various social enterprises that ultimately could be businesses, hire people, do impact, and then hopefully connect back to ideas for us and help support our ongoing operations.

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Chris Castro: That's the vision.

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Mike Collignon: And do you have any idea of how many lots or acres have been transformed through the Fleet Farming program?

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Chris Castro: Yeah, over 60 homes are currently operated within the Audubon Park community of Orlando. And this includes not just homes, but homes, churches, school lots, you know, under even East End being one of those rights businesses that have allowed us to come in and build either raised beds or whatever outside of their, their properties. And and so it's been amazing to date, there's over 30% of the schools in Oak, Orange County Public Schools, which is one of the largest school districts in the country, I think it's in the top ten, has now established a school garden because of a fleet farming investment.

00:20:45:13 - 00:21:10:11
Chris Castro: And we every school year get, get funded by the foundation, the School Districts Foundation, to provide ongoing programing, educational programing every Friday, going into that particular school of choice to provide them ongoing kind of education about this kind of farm to table concept and sustainability in general. So it's incredible to kind of see how the team has been able to grow and scale it.

00:21:10:12 - 00:21:38:12
Chris Castro: They've done, you know, literally acres of like a fruit forest that they've been able to build out for actually a professional football player. There's some really cool projects that they've been able to do. And the concept is how do we scale this fleet? Farming has the ability of going to other communities, and it did in California. A good buddy of mine, Justin Vandenberg, brought it to Oakland, California, and they ended up starting up with a few plots and ended up turning that over to another nonprofit to sustain it.

00:21:38:16 - 00:22:05:19
Chris Castro: And even in Uganda, where we have an idea for us major branch, they've created a version of fleet farming called Vertical Micro Gardening VM. And it's kind of they've built these vertical towers that are both compost units and they grow food. And because of they had smaller plots and they're putting these at community centers and schools and they have groups of them and they're able to grow food and reduce waste.

00:22:05:22 - 00:22:12:26
Chris Castro: And so it's a version of kind of decentralizing, you know, agricultural development in underutilized space.

00:22:12:28 - 00:22:13:11
Mike Collignon: Yeah.

00:22:13:12 - 00:22:14:16
Chris Castro: That is.

00:22:14:18 - 00:22:16:19
Mike Collignon: An incredible success story for sure.

00:22:16:21 - 00:22:18:16
Chris Castro: It's really neat.

00:22:18:18 - 00:22:37:04
Mike Collignon: But then you come out and you embark upon the public service portion of your career. You joined the City of Orlando staff, and you quickly work your way up the ranks to senior advisor to Buddy Dyer, who is the longest running mayor in Orlando's history.

00:22:37:12 - 00:22:45:03
Chris Castro: In the country. At this point, almost in the country, I think, like, no joke, 25 plus years. Yeah.

00:22:45:05 - 00:23:05:04
Mike Collignon: And that was that was when I got the chance to first meet you. We were in Orlando for the inaugural Green Building Media Sustainability Symposium, and that was in Orlando. What what was the highlight? If you can narrow it down to just one of your tenure with the city?

00:23:05:06 - 00:23:16:12
Chris Castro: Wow. That's a really hard question, Mike. I mean, basically a decade's worth of work into one initiative that's that's really challenging. I would say.

00:23:16:12 - 00:23:17:28
Mike Collignon: You get a lot of great work with them.

00:23:18:01 - 00:23:40:28
Chris Castro: In general. So the story is I'm head down doing ideas for us and running citizen energy, basically to pay the bills. As a small business, we were just basically scraping and trying to get by, and I was trying to use it as an energy, as a way to do that so that I could focus my time on ideas for us, because I was still volunteer, still to this day, have been volunteer in that organization, just trying to keep it growing.

00:23:40:29 - 00:24:13:03
Chris Castro: And I ended up getting this email from the city of Orlando that they had landed a grant they had received funding to hire essentially an energy advisor, somebody who could help the city think about their clean energy strategy and add to the Mayor's Sustainability initiative, which was known as Green Works Orlando. Funny enough before, and I think I got on the radar of them because I had participated as a community member in developing the city's Sustainability Action Plan, our first Green Works Action plan in 2012.

00:24:13:03 - 00:24:32:26
Chris Castro: And so I'm going to the cohorts and the various meetings, and they're broken out into the pillars of ideas for us. And we're the main organization doing a lot of the work in the community. And so we're there at every single one of these forums, right. And sharing what we're doing and trying to influence the plan. And so, you know, six months later I get this email like, all right, we got this grant.

00:24:32:26 - 00:24:54:24
Chris Castro: And now the plan's already established. Now the goal is like implementation. So I end up long story short, landing this opportunity. And I come in and begin to think about how do we focus on reducing the energy consumption at the city, focus on energy efficiency, and how do we create a marketplace to help drive more investments in clean energy for our homes and our businesses?

00:24:54:24 - 00:25:23:14
Chris Castro: That was the whole goal, right? What's the strategy? Orlando is unique in that we're a strong mayor form of government, very progressive in terms of our ideas. And we also have a municipal energy and water utility, which is a big FD, as we say, right? Because in Florida, it's a regulated monopoly market. And the only way that essentially you can have more control is if you municipalities your utility and your local government controls it.

00:25:23:14 - 00:25:46:11
Chris Castro: That becomes a real powerful lever to advance sustainability. So having these tools, we start really moving the needle. A year later, I get promoted into the director role and still Green Works is in the mayor's office. This is a initiative. Mayor Dyer's Green Works Initiative. It's an initiative of the mayors. And my biggest concern was when Mayor Dyer leaves, what's going to happen with Green Works?

00:25:46:12 - 00:26:13:16
Chris Castro: What's the focus? So I'd say my biggest contribution and not to pick out an individual policy or program because there are dozens. My biggest contribution was permanently establishing green works into the city of Orlando, into the city's code charter, into the actual comprehensive plan, and establishing policies that required an Office of Sustainability and Resilience to to be existent in order to to manage what we were doing.

00:26:13:23 - 00:26:42:16
Chris Castro: And that was a big deal. And but it's amazing. I mean, everything from helping the city, you know, commit to 100% clean energy and significantly move the needle. Over 50% of the municipal operations is now powered by renewable energy. We did over four megawatts of distributed rooftop on fire stations and community centers. Right. The city converted city public land into edible landscapes, into a program called Grow a Lot, where I basically took vacant lots at the city owned.

00:26:42:16 - 00:27:02:20
Chris Castro: And I said, why are we mowing this and spending money? Let's turn it over to a nonprofit, let them grow food and meet our food desert issues and boom, we take off with this program. Now, Orlando is the home of what's called the Four Roots Urban Farm, which is a premier like showcase for urban agriculture across the state of Florida, let alone, you know, Orlando itself.

00:27:02:23 - 00:27:24:14
Chris Castro: And so that's an example that's on public land. It was a it was a strategic partnership with the city. We ended up rolling out the first food waste collection program, actually, as a city in the southeast, collecting food waste from restaurants and other commercial properties and diverting that from the landfill to create renewable natural gas and compost. And it was amazing.

00:27:24:14 - 00:27:47:08
Chris Castro: We rolled out backyard compost for every resident in the city so that they can start diverting their food and composting in their backyard. I mean, and each one of those major pillars, we advance some groundbreaking initiatives. And I'd say today, by many third party measures, Orlando is one of, if not the greenest city in the southeast when you're looking at all of the different indicators.

00:27:47:13 - 00:28:09:04
Chris Castro: And so it was a real joy and an honor and a privilege to be able to serve the city that I, you know, really made me who I was, that that, you know, I was able to establish myself as a professional and take my lessons learned at the ideas for US level, which was really campus specific, and scale it to one of the largest cities, fastest growing cities in the country.

00:28:09:06 - 00:28:25:14
Chris Castro: And to be at that time, I was 25 years old. I was the youngest sustainability director in the United States, and it was just an opportunity for me to be driving innovation on like I had ever seen. So it was really, really cool.

00:28:25:17 - 00:28:43:14
Mike Collignon: Did you ever, at any point, have other cities knock on your door to say, hey, we'd like to do something like this to, you know, that that ever happened. Did you ever have conversations with other sustainability directors from other cities? It's how they could replicate some of the things that you were leading.

00:28:43:14 - 00:29:15:20
Chris Castro: On, not just in the US, but cities globally. We had cities really flying from China, from Vietnam, from Japan, from Europe. They were coming here to learn about what we were doing to advance sustainability in the city. And I will say, as it relates to working with other local governments in the US, no doubt there is a network and fact that we were members of called the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, or USN, and it actually had US southeast arm, Southeast Sustainability Directors Network, SSN.

00:29:15:22 - 00:29:44:16
Chris Castro: And then we established a Florida Sustainability Directors Network, FSN, that has now over 50 members, local governments from Key West all the way up to Tallahassee counties like Leon County, Orange County, you know, Duval, which is Jacksonville, that whole area. And so it's amazing to see the peer learning and the exchange of knowledge and solutions from city to city, and how some cities actually work together to advance legislation and policy together.

00:29:44:18 - 00:30:06:01
Chris Castro: We did an EV readiness code at the city of Orlando, and we worked with the city of Winter Park, Orange County, and the City of Orlando to engage our similar stakeholders and to co-create the same policy so that we had continuity across the region. I mean, that's examples of how really the partnership and collaboration helped us to scale.

00:30:06:01 - 00:30:35:19
Chris Castro: And the last thing I'll say is it even went further. In Central Florida, we built and established what's called the Regional Resilience Collaborative. What I was seeing is that certain MSAs, metropolitan statistical areas, right. They were establishing these collaboratives around climate and resilience. And the most famous one is down in South Florida, the Southeast Regional Climate Compact. And it was the four counties of Southeast Florida that came together because of sea level rise issues and saltwater intrusion.

00:30:35:19 - 00:31:03:20
Chris Castro: And so for the last decade plus, they had been organizing as an entity, as a collaborative to work together. And I said, why are we not doing that in Central Florida? And I approached the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council, which is our RPC, right. And they're overseeing seven counties and like 80 different cities. And I said, this is an opportunity for us to replicate what we've done down in South Florida and try to create a collaborative.

00:31:03:20 - 00:31:26:15
Chris Castro: And to date, that collaborative is known as the artsy, the regional resilience collaborative. It's one of the best examples of how local and regional governments are coming together to do greenhouse gas emissions inventories, to do climate risk and vulnerability assessments of green, blue and great infrastructure. They did a tie to the SDGs and they looked at the priorities of the global goals.

00:31:26:16 - 00:31:44:18
Chris Castro: I mean, across seven counties and these are of all colors and stripes, right? As you can imagine. So a really cool way for for us to share. And Orlando was always kind of that, that beacon of light that was driving the innovation. And, and people were taking and gleaning from so.

00:31:44:20 - 00:32:11:03
Mike Collignon: And the it's like now the whether it be the local governments, the regional groups, they're still able to operate, collaborate and thrive. Even though we've seen resistance at the state level in Florida. On just even saying the words climate change together. That's true. So they're able to transcend that resistance or those headwinds.

00:32:11:04 - 00:32:39:27
Chris Castro: Yeah, it's really interesting. They have been able to kind of mitigate the legislature's attack on home rule and attack on sustainability in general. And I think it's these regional governments that are made up of both conservative and and more progressive parts of these regions that are actually coming together, finding common ground, finding the opportunities around workforce development, around economic development, around how to harden our infrastructure so that we can withstand the next major hurricane, which we know we're going to get right.

00:32:39:28 - 00:33:00:23
Chris Castro: How do we make these regional investments together so that we reduce each individual cost and we can strengthen us as a whole? And it's that same concept of being stronger, greater than the sum of its parts. Right. And so yeah, it's really exciting. And by the way, now there's a regional collaborative in pretty much every part of the state.

00:33:00:23 - 00:33:19:21
Chris Castro: There's one in the Tallahassee Panhandle, there's one in Duval area in Jacksonville, there's Tampa Bay's, there's Central Florida, there's a southwest and the southeast. And they talk on a monthly basis to coordinate amongst the artsy so that, you know, there are things that collectively, we could all be moving forward or working with the legislature to enable. Right.

00:33:19:24 - 00:33:39:21
Mike Collignon: Okay. Awesome. So you're there. You're doing great things at the city, but then you get the call to go to DC. Yeah. Let's let's first talk about what you were initially brought in to do at the Department of Energy.

00:33:39:23 - 00:34:09:08
Chris Castro: Yeah. This is I'm head down at the city at this time and I'll tell you, I had a runway of at least another decade of work, like incredible policies ahead. I had a vision of where we were headed, and they continue to move down that path. But I had no ambition of joining the administration, to be honest. I had so much work at the local government, and I saw the important of local government work during the prior administration, the prior Trump administration, right when there was this active attack on the federal level to to to roll things back.

00:34:09:08 - 00:34:31:26
Chris Castro: But it was the local governments that stepped up that flexed the muscle, that created climate mayors and a bunch of these networks. And all of a sudden it really was being moved by states and local governments. Right. And so I saw the power of cities. I was in the city driving that forward and seeing the needles move and businesses move to Orlando and relocate their headquarters because of our work in sustainability.

00:34:31:27 - 00:34:56:27
Chris Castro: I mean, no joke. So so it was working and I ended up getting an email. So it wasn't a call, but it was an email from the Office of Presidential Personnel. And to me, it was so random because it said that I was a finalist for a chief of staff role at the US Department of Energy, and it wanted me to move forward with, you know, clicking this link and and identifying times for me to do an interview.

00:34:56:27 - 00:35:16:25
Chris Castro: And I'm like, I just did my cybersecurity training, I'm fishing this thing like I did not put my name in the hat. I wasn't a donor in the administration. Like I didn't know why I was on the list. And and sure enough, our CIO's office ends up flagging and coming back and saying, that's not a fishing email. You should probably call the number in the signature.

00:35:16:25 - 00:35:32:26
Chris Castro: And sure enough, it was the office presidential personnel. And they said, no, this is legitimate. If you're interested, we need you to schedule a time and we'll do an interview. And I ended up doing seven interviews up and down the white House and the US Department of Energy, all the way to the chief of staff at the Doe at the time to shore.

00:35:32:26 - 00:35:57:19
Chris Castro: And, you know, the email came in in March. We were doing these interviews up until the end of May, and I basically was to a point where I needed to make a decision pretty quick if this was real or not, because I had a daughter that was about to get into kindergarten, and the last thing I was going to do is move for her during her first year of getting into schools, I'm like, you got to make a choice, or else I'm going to continue here.

00:35:57:19 - 00:36:35:07
Chris Castro: And sure enough, they gave me an offer in early June, and by mid-July, six weeks later, I was starting at the US Department of Energy, and my task was to be the inaugural chief of staff and come in to lift up a new office at the US Department of Energy, an office that focused on deploying grant money and supporting technical assistance for all of the subnational partners that was working with those subnational partners include states and tribal governments, local governments like cities and counties, community institutions like universities and school districts and nonprofits.

00:36:35:08 - 00:36:57:06
Chris Castro: Those were all the key stakeholders that essentially this office was intended to support. And when I got in there, the bipartisan infrastructure law had been passed. And so the formation was the office was to activate the money that came out of the bill and to start deploying it to those community institutions. So my office was called Skip the Office of State and Community Energy Programs.

00:36:57:06 - 00:37:35:07
Chris Castro: And I came in as employee number one to basically begin to formulate the org chart and the idea. A week later, our director, Doctor Henry McCoy, became my partner in change. In this effort, him and I then start to assemble the core team and bring in program managers and detail people from other offices so that we have people to start lifting up these programs, because we basically have to take at the time was $6 billion worth of bill and IRA money and create grants, because, of course, the statute says you're getting $500 million for public schools to help support them with lowering costs.

00:37:35:09 - 00:37:50:17
Chris Castro: Okay. How do we do that? How do we actually set that up to be most impactful? So we had to take the statute language, begin to work with experts to design what the grant is going to be, how to drive the most impact, and then go through the gantlet of getting that approved up and down the chain and then actually getting the money out.

00:37:50:21 - 00:38:16:29
Chris Castro: We have to do that for 26 new grants, 26 new grants. So I'm like this. I'm literally working around the clock. The day I got there to the day I left, I think I was working on average 13 hours a day. I had two shifts, including a night shift. After I put my girls down. I had a nine to midnight shift almost nightly, even when I was on the road, and I even had a 10:00 meeting.

00:38:17:04 - 00:38:36:07
Chris Castro: There was a standing meeting with some of my staff, because it was the only time we were able to actually come up for air and begin working on some key things. So all that said is it was nonstop. It was around the clock, and it was the time that we had to give in order to do everything we possibly could to drive the most impact at that moment.

00:38:36:09 - 00:38:56:11
Chris Castro: And funny enough, like, I get there in July, of course. August of 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act is passed. Big deal with the IRA, of course, the climate law. And we a couple of months go by first week of October, we get a big email from the Secretary, Secretary Granholm. It's called the Doe cast. It goes out to every employee at the department.

00:38:56:18 - 00:39:17:20
Chris Castro: And she summarizes the dose now authority that came out of the IRA, how much money, what our new authorities that we have. And she starts dictating all of the offices that are going to manage this money and Skip is on there and additional $10 billion. So we started with six being 16. Of course, I have to figure out how many more staff we need.

00:39:17:22 - 00:40:00:00
Chris Castro: Like it became the whole calculus. Four months into starting this new office, we get another charge that explodes right? Triples what we're doing more than doubles, at least. And so it was quite a roller coaster to to keep it light of just trying to navigate the federal landscape of all of the things from procurement to HR and hiring people to program design and getting funding out to, to then the selections of the grants to do so through a review process and make sure that, you know, we're able to obligate this money, you know, as quick as possible to the right entities, and that by the time I left, we got out 11.2 billion of the

00:40:00:00 - 00:40:21:10
Chris Castro: 16 billion fully obligated out the door. That money is in the bank accounts of these states and local governments, and they're doing the work over the this year and the coming years. And so I think it's important to note that, you know, Doe got out over 80% of bill and IRA money. It was like close to $100 billion of money that was fully obligated.

00:40:21:11 - 00:40:33:24
Chris Castro: The money that we hear about being stalled and clawed back, that was the 20%, which is still billions of dollars, but it was a fraction compared to what we actually were able to deploy, which was really cool.

00:40:33:26 - 00:40:54:21
Mike Collignon: And all those funds, I don't know. I don't know if this gets lost in the halls of Congress or not, but all those funds were helping people, regardless of political affiliation, regardless of, you know, location. It was it was to merely help them and.

00:40:54:28 - 00:41:17:00
Chris Castro: Only and lower cost and drive affordability. And to your point, Mike, it was intentional to focus on historically disadvantaged communities, not just Brac and violent communities, but rural communities that were also fully disengaged and have not been invested in in literally decades. The whole focus was I was part of an interagency working group called the Rule Partnership Network.

00:41:17:00 - 00:41:43:22
Chris Castro: It was all about how to mobilize our federal resources at every level to support rule communities. I helped lead an interagency working group for energy transition communities. It's called the Energy Communities iWRG, and it was all about coal power plant and coal mining communities that were going through an imminent transition. And how do we provide a whole of government approach to help them think through what the pivot is going to be in sustaining their economy and their livelihoods?

00:41:43:23 - 00:42:02:26
Chris Castro: This was it wasn't just climate money and go to the places that that are doing and keep doubling. It was literally the opposite. It was intentional to say, we need to get everybody else on board and need to focus on an infrastructure that brings those furthest from sustainability into the fold, and do so with funding and resources and technical teams.

00:42:02:26 - 00:42:26:04
Chris Castro: I got the structure of partnership between Doe and AmeriCorps to launch our first entered clean energy AmeriCorps program, and essentially deployed over 100 AmeriCorps Vistas to these energy communities to support them with capacity building and just people on the ground to do the convenience, to do the road mapping, to do the interviews. Right. And so that was an amazing way.

00:42:26:04 - 00:43:02:18
Chris Castro: We also established an Arctic Energy Ambassadors program, where we funded with the Arctic Energy Office and funded 12 energy ambassadors across the state of Alaska. And we put one ambassador in each of the what's called the answer, Alaska Regional Native corporations. That's kind of how the state's broken up. So each RNC has an expert energy person that's hired to literally just work the RNC, go to the local tribes, go to the Alaskan villages, connect with those local governments, bundle project pipelines be a conduit to federal resources.

00:43:02:18 - 00:43:24:23
Chris Castro: And it was the first time that Doe was thinking about boots on the ground, actually moving from this agency that was very black box behind the black curtain, you know, national labs and a federal agency to more like what USDA and EPA have done, which is really created a more regional footprint and more place based approach to the work.

00:43:24:23 - 00:43:49:19
Chris Castro: And in order for us to make this transition, we have to it is imperative that we move towards a place based approach to deployment of the resources, not just the research and development agency, which is what has historically been, but now all of these resources to deploy, to demonstrate and deploy at scale. And that was the charge of Skip and our whole new function at Doe, the undersecretary for infrastructure.

00:43:49:21 - 00:44:08:06
Chris Castro: That whole function was all about deploy, deploy, deploy. Let's get funds out to, you know, these these these technologies that we know are proven, that are working, that are helping Americans drive affordability and lower cost. And oh, by the way, help emissions. So yeah, there's the work.

00:44:08:08 - 00:44:41:13
Mike Collignon: And I love the fact that you were able to I don't know if targets the right word, Chris, but you were able to to do some focusing on places where the delta was going to be the largest. Right. Like you said, there's people who are furthest from sustainability. Get them closer rather than the misconception that some people have, which is, oh, this just went to, you know, already existing green pet projects and they didn't really need the money and all this like you were looking at really making the biggest impact because the Delta was so big.

00:44:41:14 - 00:45:09:26
Chris Castro: 100%. The renewal America's Schools grant I talked about that 500 million. And how do we deploy the biggest impact? $500 million is a drop in the bucket. There is an 18 billion plus dollar gap in school deferred maintenance across this country. And they gave us 500 million. They're like, go solve it. And we're like, what the. And so we had to design the grant to focus on schools that were in title one, that were lease resources that, that that were in these communities.

00:45:09:26 - 00:45:25:10
Chris Castro: And that was part of how we were intentional about getting the money to the school districts that needed it most, because of course, any school district, if it was open ended, would have applied and they would have had a great rapport, and they had had so many more resources to pull something together, and it would have gone to the Chicago's or the Orlando's of the world.

00:45:25:14 - 00:45:43:06
Chris Castro: Now, the whole idea was to really get to those school districts that were way far and really had deferred 20 years of an HVAC system, and we're spending ridiculous amounts on their power bill because of it. And, of course, you know, the students were underperforming because there weren't comfortable and bump it up out, right. All the stuff that we know.

00:45:43:06 - 00:45:50:15
Chris Castro: And so that's how we needed to be intentional. Let's get the money out to those. And that's how we designed the grants to do so.

00:45:50:18 - 00:46:11:09
Mike Collignon: Yeah. All right. So administration changes. Turnover happens like it usually does in D.C.. You quickly pivot to First Climate Bank I think this is an incredible venture. Let our audience know a little bit more about what you're able to do there.

00:46:11:11 - 00:46:36:28
Chris Castro: Yeah. Climate first Bank is an amazing organization. It's an FBI c insured bank, like a traditional bank that you think about, right, where deposits and savings are held. But the whole idea is it's a public benefit corporation. It's a certified B Corp bank. And the purpose of starting Climate First Bank was to use our collective deposits to actually use money as a force for good, to help finance the solutions in our communities and not the problem that we're trying to solve.

00:46:36:28 - 00:47:01:04
Chris Castro: And of course, Climate First Bank. Our mission is to really play a meaningful role in decarbonization and advancing a regenerative economy with that banking business model. Right. And so while I was at the city of Orlando, in fact, this story starts back when I was with ideas for us and had started it, my professor, Penelope Cannon, had connected me to Ken Laro.

00:47:01:10 - 00:47:24:21
Chris Castro: Ken Laro is the chairman and founder of Climate First Bank, and at the time he had started, I had been starting what's called First Green Bank. It was a second bank, and it was actually the last bank to get a charter from FDIC post the Great Recession for like a seven year period. So this guy, like, gets the last charter to start a bank in America right at in 2009.

00:47:24:21 - 00:47:42:29
Chris Castro: And they're like kind of okay. And and so my I get in touch with him because my professor was like, what you're doing with ideas for us and the students and the communities is what Ken is doing on the private sector. And he's like, you know, basically 30, 30 years older than you. But like, you guys got to connect.

00:47:43:05 - 00:48:04:25
Chris Castro: He ends up becoming a mentor of mine over that decade, even transitioning into the city, I had continued to meet with Ken and see First Green Grow. And in 2018, he ends up selling First green Bank ends up exiting from from banking. And he thought his hands were, you know, he was done. And sure enough, he goes on a national tour.

00:48:04:25 - 00:48:27:20
Chris Castro: Is the story with his wife, Cindy Laro, amazing artist and medical doctor. And they come back and he ends up, we go on to our regular quarterly lunch. And at that lunch he says that he has not fulfilled his vision in creating a bank as a force for good, and wanted to invite me to be part of the founding directors in starting this next bank.

00:48:27:24 - 00:48:51:11
Chris Castro: At this time, we have not named it at this time. It's just the concept of creating a B Corp bank that we're going to not sell as the traditional community bank business model, but take this thing national and create a long term sustainable solution for this country. And and so I was sold. I then started spending nights and weekends working with Ken to think about what the business model looked like.

00:48:51:14 - 00:49:17:00
Chris Castro: Part of my contribution was saying, listen, we need to really bring in a digital experience into our bank. Because he had perfected the community bank business model of brick and mortar banking, your local dentists and HVAC contractors, and providing lines like traditional community banking. But if we were going to be meaningful in financing decarbonization, it needed to be a completely different scale and order.

00:49:17:00 - 00:49:35:13
Chris Castro: To do that, you have to digitize it. And you had seen companies like Mosaic and Goodly, these fintech companies who had been really leading out on financing solar, but they were doing it with very high cost capital, private equity money. And there was a way for us to compete in this space if we were doing it as a community bank.

00:49:35:13 - 00:49:57:03
Chris Castro: And long story short, we brought over an incredible CTO, Marcio Oliveira. He became the founder of our sister company One Ethos and, you know, has taken off to be to, you know, to be a meaningful player in the solar finance game. So all that said is I had been fortunate to be part of the founding team to launch Climate First Bank.

00:49:57:06 - 00:50:15:15
Chris Castro: When we opened the doors June 1st of 2021, I was on the board of directors, and so I was still at the city, but I was, you know, on the board, and I had been on the board for that whole year until the appointment came. And part of the accepting the appointment was, you know, exiting from all of my fiduciary responsibilities and any boards that I was on.

00:50:15:15 - 00:50:37:07
Chris Castro: So I left ideas for us as board and fleet farming and like eight other nonprofits, plus the bank board and I, you know, took a risk to do that. But February 9th, 2024, right. We know the election results. And I end up calling Ken back to be a reference for me, because now I have to start finding my next job.

00:50:37:07 - 00:50:53:13
Chris Castro: I have a family to sustain here. I can't just chill. And so I call Ken to be a reference. I'm like, can you be a reference for me? I'm starting to get interest of people who want me to interview for certain roles, and I want you to be a reference. And he told me flat out, no. He said, no, I don't want you to be a reference.

00:50:53:16 - 00:51:26:29
Chris Castro: I got a better idea. I want you to one join us back on the board because we've held your seat and have it replaced it. And two, I want you to join us as part of the executive management team and be our chief strategy or sustainability officer. I ended up taking the Chief Sustainability Officer title and really helping the bank kind of scale nationally and prop up our green lending and our mission aligned deposit and lending customers, and really figure out how to continue to infuse sustainability into every product and service that we're offering at the bank.

00:51:26:29 - 00:51:41:08
Chris Castro: And so I was fortunate. I took a couple of weeks off. You know, I left I was booted January 20th, literally day one at noon. I took two weeks off and I started here on February 3rd. So one year ago, almost to the day.

00:51:41:11 - 00:51:50:15
Mike Collignon: I say a well-deserved vacation, given all the things that you had had on your plate in the the amount of hours that you were putting in, it was definitely well deserved.

00:51:50:17 - 00:52:01:08
Chris Castro: It was nice. It was a nice two weeks, although it was nerve wracking because the first two weeks of of this was also pretty chaotic and I was just seeing a lot of uncertainty ahead. Oh yeah.

00:52:01:10 - 00:52:03:07
Mike Collignon: Yeah. Which we've seen to come to fruition.

00:52:03:07 - 00:52:05:04
Chris Castro: Definitely true.

00:52:05:07 - 00:52:21:10
Mike Collignon: All right. We got the chance to talk a couple of weeks back. And you mentioned to me that financially, you're able to really reduce the negative impact of the loss of the renewable energy federal tax credit. Can can you talk a little bit about how that's possible?

00:52:21:12 - 00:52:52:20
Chris Castro: Yeah, certainly. I mean, since the inception of Climate First, our whole goal was to figure out how do we leverage the lowest cost private capital on the market, and that's FDIC insured deposits in order to help us finance the solutions towards sustainability. Right. That's that's the theory of change. And the issue is that historically, a lot of solar financing has been has been initiated or enabled by fintech companies that aren't regulated banks, they're not using low cost deposits to deploy into solar loans.

00:52:52:21 - 00:53:21:29
Chris Castro: They're raising money from private equity, which is higher, higher cost of capital. And they're trying to deploy that capital to contractors that are essentially are doing their their projects right. And so when we initiated the Climate First Bank, our whole goal was to actually flip the solar lending model on its head and offer a much more ethical and transparent product for the consumer, so that they can truly understand the value that they're getting by investing in solar.

00:53:22:04 - 00:53:46:04
Chris Castro: The big issue with historically how solar has been financed is this concept called the dealer fee. And traditionally the way that these fintech companies were making the projects pencil was that they were charging the contractors, the solar business, the installer, a fee in order for them to use the technology that they offered and the financing that they had.

00:53:46:05 - 00:54:04:03
Chris Castro: Right. Basically, they were offering the contractor a way to streamline and simplify the sale of your project at the dinner table so that when you're talking right to to Sally or John, you're able to kind of sit down and go through the whole project with them and be able to finance it before you leave. And that was that was wonderful.

00:54:04:03 - 00:54:38:12
Chris Castro: But the challenge is that dealer fee added a significant cost to the overall system. And in fact, on average, it was between 20% and upwards of 40% of a dealer fee. Significant. Not five. Not single. No, this was double digit fee. Yeah. The other thing that we felt was a bit unethical was that those finance providers, those fintechs, also required an NDA with the installer that basically said you can't disclose the fee I'm charging you to the customer.

00:54:38:12 - 00:55:01:07
Chris Castro: So when dollar was giving the customer a quote, they were patting their pricing because they had to hide in the fee that ultimately they were being charged. Right. And it would inflate the overall system cost upwards of 20 to 40%. On average. It was over 30%. And what it's our federal tax credit or our federal tax credit is a 30% investment tax credit.

00:55:01:08 - 00:55:24:14
Chris Castro: So a lot of people were in this kind of, you know, you know, we're being sold this fallacy that you're getting this federal tax credit. And it was helping lower the system costs. But really what was happening is they were being charged up front to lower the interest rate through this dealer fee. And they were also requiring that that homeowner took the tax credit and rolled it into the loan.

00:55:24:14 - 00:55:50:27
Chris Castro: And that if you didn't roll that tax credit into the loan to lower to keep your payments low, that your payments would jump up. Right. And so you had two kind of issues here. You had this unethical issue with the installer not properly providing a transparent quote to the customer. And then you had this situation where the customer still had to take the tax credit and roll it into the loan when they got it, whether they wanted to or not, and whether they achieve the full 30% tax credit or not.

00:55:51:03 - 00:56:08:25
Chris Castro: Right. And that's the thing that a lot of people also don't know, is that you have to have a tax liability in order to get the full tax credit. And if you don't have if you if you're not in the right income bracket, you're in the lower or moderate income, you're not going to get the full 30. You might only get 10% of the tax credit because of your tax liability.

00:56:08:26 - 00:56:28:05
Chris Castro: So you had these deals where they were sold on the 30% that they had to bring it in, but they only got 10%. And then they wouldn't roll that in and their payments would go up and they would be underwater for solar. You were spending more then you were getting some benefit. And this became really how solar had been financed over the last ten years.

00:56:28:05 - 00:56:47:00
Chris Castro: And we said as a bank, we're regulated institution. We have to have the utmost consumer protections possible, and we need to make sure that we are offering an ethical product, because over the long run, we can't have these fees that ultimately are inflating the cost of solar and and mitigating the drop in cost to make it more affordable.

00:56:47:02 - 00:57:10:00
Chris Castro: Right. The fat in solar is has been really customer acquisition, marketing and finance. It's really it's over 50% of a solar array. People are paying for that stuff. It's not even the hardware. It's the soft cost. We call it stuff. Right. So we came in and said if we could use FDIC insured deposits, we don't have to charge the dealer fee because I don't have a cost of capital at 6 or 7%.

00:57:10:00 - 00:57:33:03
Chris Castro: I actually have it at 3.5%. Right. And so therefore I don't have to charge a fee in order to make my, you know, my, my net interest margin, my overall return that I'm looking at. And also as a bank, we're able to amortize the loans much further than fintechs or even cdfi or credit unions. They only can max at 20 years.

00:57:33:04 - 00:57:53:21
Chris Castro: Guess what? Our loan is 30 years. So the second you start creating a mortgage style product where somebody can get 100% financing, amortize it over the 30 years like a mortgage, and simply pay a monthly fixed over the term. Now you're talking about a solution that doesn't rely on the government tax credit, that is fully transparent to the customer.

00:57:53:21 - 00:58:12:05
Chris Castro: If they want a cash deal or they want to finance deal, it'll be the same price, right? And they can reap all of the financial benefits. They can take the credit and pocket it. They get the cash credit and roll it into the loan and we'll drop your payments. But never will your payment ever go up a penny from the day you sign with the Climate First bank loan.

00:58:12:05 - 00:58:33:18
Chris Castro: And that's the fundamental difference, right? We flipped it on its head. You normally had to pay low and go high, and now you, you know, start low and can go lower. And that became at first, I'll tell you, it wasn't popular to have this product because the competitors, the mosaics, were selling a customer at a 3.99% interest. Right.

00:58:33:19 - 00:58:55:00
Chris Castro: Versus my 7%. Now it's 8% fixed interest. But they didn't realize that the whole system was 30% more. So although it was a 3.99%, I spent way more up front. And that's that's how we've been able to kind of turn the thing around. So in a world without tax credits, we will definitely see a shrinking of the market.

00:58:55:01 - 00:59:27:27
Chris Castro: Would Mackenzie, one of the biggest forecasters, has mentioned that we'll probably see a 20 to 40% drop in residential solar in the country, which is substantial. That's loss of businesses. That is definitely an erosion of the progress we've been making. But I do think that we're going to see eventually a tick back up later this year into 2027, and we're going to continue to see solar be a viable financial investment for homeowners because as you see, the rise in electric rates are only going up quicker and more aggressive than we've seen historically.

00:59:27:27 - 00:59:43:10
Chris Castro: And so it's only helping solar pencil better. And so we feel that if we continue to come out with this ethical product, mortgage style loan that will continue to gain market share and build out our solution for the country.

00:59:43:12 - 01:00:06:15
Mike Collignon: And it feels like to me, and I don't have any data to back this up. Maybe, maybe you've seen something, but it feels to me like there's a growing momentum to pair the batteries with the solar systems, and that there's there's definitely a market appeal out there to to look at that more complete system, that more independent style system for people.

01:00:06:15 - 01:00:08:03
Mike Collignon: Are you seeing that through the bank, too?

01:00:08:04 - 01:00:31:26
Chris Castro: We are we're seeing a real uptick in the percentage of loans that are coupling solar and storage. And the cool thing about our loan is it allows you to roll in the battery and the solar and a new roof, as well as enabling electrical upgrades into one loan. So you're able to bundle these different improvements in into one loan, one piece of paper, and be able to stretch that over the 30 years at a fixed interest.

01:00:31:26 - 01:00:56:09
Chris Castro: And oh, by the way, no dealer fee, but there's also no prepayment penalty. And that's a really interesting thing. Most solar, when it's financed is paid off between 5 and 7 years. Historically, the last 20 years of solar paper people might get a 20 year loan, but what happens is they refinance their house or they sell their house within the 5 to 7 year period is on average, and they basically have to pay that solar loan off.

01:00:56:09 - 01:01:17:15
Chris Castro: So what we decided to do is our collateral for the loan is a UCC one filing on the equipment. It's a specific type of way to cloud the title of and basically have collaterals of. Somebody defaults on that. Technically, we could pull the panels off of the roof if we wanted. Right. And the beauty about it is for our loan.

01:01:17:15 - 01:01:44:28
Chris Castro: If you decide to refinance in the second year, there's no penalty to to do that to prepay. So no prepayment penalties on the loan. And so the goal is stretch it 30 years to financially engineer the product so that the payment per month is as close to a utility bill replacement as possible. And if you can get somebody to literally replace with their normally paying for solar, you're going to go hand over fist, it's going to go forward, right.

01:01:44:29 - 01:02:12:09
Chris Castro: And you're going to start seeing the financial benefits from it. And that's why we have virtually zero defaults and over 8800 households we have financed to date in the last few years, over $450 million worth of solar across 45 states, and thus far have virtually a default of 0%. Because why would you default on alone when I'm going to spend more on my power bill, that's only going up year over year, right?

01:02:12:10 - 01:02:34:14
Mike Collignon: Yeah. No, that's that's a great that's a great initial track record. And I hope that it continues that way. And I can see where it would. But that's that's what I want to be able to report that so far. Yeah. So I've felt and I've joked with you about this before, I felt that whenever we talk, I'm talking to a future president of the United States.

01:02:34:14 - 01:03:02:02
Mike Collignon: And that might sound preposterous, but your track record of forming local and international groups that accomplished so much is incredible. And these things are happening regardless of political affiliation, as we talked about before. So the question is, given your exposure to the executive branch, are you ever considering running for office someday?

01:03:02:05 - 01:03:17:02
Chris Castro: And Mike, what a question. I will say it's not out of the it's not off the table. And, you know, I still think I have a lot to do, but naturally I feel that.

01:03:17:04 - 01:03:51:20
Chris Castro: I do feel that there's a role for me to support our community in a different way. And when I'm not sure, but I am open to the right opportunity to to be able to lead, whether it's at a local level. I'm really big fan of what Mayor Dyer has done, and he's inspired me to actually, if I would look at, you know, elected leadership, it would be something like a mayor of a city because of what he was able to do, how how my partizan he was and his leadership and the ability of really seeing progress on the ground.

01:03:51:20 - 01:04:18:06
Chris Castro: When you're in that role, it's it's it's very much the closest that you can get to influencing your community at a scale that is meaningful. And and so it's not off the table, Mike, but certainly not in the current cards or, you know, you know, something that I'm striving towards per se. And to be honest, a lot of this stuff has, has, has just, has just come my way.

01:04:18:07 - 01:04:35:14
Chris Castro: Right. Like as I was talking about, I was head down with ideas for us and citizen and I was trying to retrofit buildings and all of a sudden I get this email from the city like, hey, there's this opportunity. And I joined the city and I fall in love with local government and doing that work. And then I'm head down and all of a sudden I get this other, I have no idea, and I can go to the federal government.

01:04:35:14 - 01:04:59:16
Chris Castro: And so all that is, I keep thinking back to, you know, taking advice from a river and, and, and going with what comes at me. And of course, I'm manifesting that with my work and what I'm doing in the connections I'm making. But those connections are creating a complexity that is, is is opening up doors that I would have never imagined.

01:04:59:16 - 01:05:13:15
Chris Castro: And so I can't take that off the table because one day there might be an opening that really, you know, calls me to act and calls me to serve in a way that I, that I can't deny. Right. And so I'm open to it.

01:05:13:18 - 01:05:39:18
Mike Collignon: And what you hit on, I've heard Pete Buttigieg talk about before, about how, you know, when you're in the mayoral position, you know, it really you have to look at it all and you have to be able to deal with everyone. And it does suit you to a higher level of office. But it's he was talking about it from both that perspective and the perspective of, you know, it's it's really important.

01:05:39:18 - 01:05:43:17
Mike Collignon: And you're really working with the people every day. And, you know, there's.

01:05:43:17 - 01:06:08:09
Chris Castro: A matter of like you or not, you know what? You know, color or creed or belief that they have. You're right. It's on the ground. And it's it's the real work of supporting, you know, the next generation with education and opportunity. It's economic development and growth. It's, you know, it's really fostering a resilient and thriving community. And there's so many pieces that you know, that require to to get there.

01:06:08:09 - 01:06:34:29
Chris Castro: And so I do think that local government is just something I really enjoyed what I was doing in Orlando. And I think that that is a space for those who are looking at where you might be able to make an impact. Don't don't leave government off the table. Considering everything that's going on. I do know that there might be some some concern in that space, but that is one of the most fulfilling things that I have ever done and probably will ever do was being in that city.

01:06:35:01 - 01:06:59:10
Mike Collignon: Well, and, you know, there's a certain magic when, you know, like you mentioned, you're just doing what you're doing and people knock on your door to say, hey, well, will you consider this? Will you consider that? In my opinion, that's that's the kind of leader that I think is, is needed because I think of it as the reluctant leader.

01:06:59:12 - 01:07:17:07
Mike Collignon: It's the person who is like, hey, I'm just I'm just doing good things. And other people are going, yeah, but you need to do more. You need to be able to do more. And I know that you can accomplish more if you were to be this or that leader, regardless of whether it's elected or not.

01:07:17:12 - 01:07:17:27
Chris Castro: Sure.

01:07:17:28 - 01:07:30:15
Mike Collignon: Totally. But that that concept of the reluctant leader, to me, just it feels so good because it's not someone saying, oh, I don't know. Look at me. Only I'm the only one who can do this.

01:07:30:16 - 01:07:31:26
Chris Castro: And like we.

01:07:31:27 - 01:07:33:23
Mike Collignon: Here today in.

01:07:33:25 - 01:08:05:02
Chris Castro: Very perspective. Yes. No. Agree. It's coming from a genuine place of wanting to serve and wanting to really make the biggest positive impact you could possibly make on, on a regular basis. And yeah, no. That's funny. You're not. The first person has asked me. I get it often. I get a lot of people urging me to consider it because I think to your point, they think if I can get into that position, that I could actually break down a lot of barriers that have that have persisted, you know, and can really make some, some change.

01:08:05:02 - 01:08:07:17
Chris Castro: So I'm open to it.

01:08:07:20 - 01:08:15:09
Mike Collignon: And I'll make the joke that now you're finally old enough to run for president so you can true. You can do it.

01:08:15:10 - 01:08:19:27
Chris Castro: I just reached over that, that minimum threshold. That's right.

01:08:20:01 - 01:08:44:16
Mike Collignon: That's right. True. You mentioned next generation. And and this is kind of where I want to wrap up our conversation. You're still young, but you've accomplished a lot. What advice would you give to the kid who's listening or watching to this and saying, you know, I'm inspired. I want to follow this path?

01:08:44:19 - 01:09:05:01
Chris Castro: Well, listen, I'm a I'm a proud that as well. One thing we haven't talked about a little bit more on the personal side, but I have a daughter, the two daughters, three and eight years old. And of course, I'm starting to and I have been looking, you know, through life, through their lens and trying to figure out how to make sure that by the time they're my age, they have so much more than I have.

01:09:05:02 - 01:09:30:04
Chris Castro: And the opportunities continue to be endless. And, and so as I think you know, about their future and those who are really trying to get in this space, I encourage them to stay curious. I think, first and foremost, this this curiosity about the world is what allows me to continue driving forward and being open to new opportunities.

01:09:30:05 - 01:09:58:00
Chris Castro: When I was at UCF and trying to figure out where within the sustainability world I wanted to lean into, because of course, there's so much under that sun, I started doing a whole bunch of different experiential learning opportunities. I did. We did gopher tortoise surveying in our natural lands, and was understanding keystone species that did an urban heat island study with a bunch of data loggers and looking at how do we, you know, mitigate, you know, with resilience, some of the heat islands that we're seeing.

01:09:58:02 - 01:10:29:25
Chris Castro: I got to go to the US Department of Energy and look as an intern and look at the federal landscape of of policy making and grant making and how that spurred this partnership of federalism all the way down to my backyard, right, to to move the needle. And I think that my biggest strength in any role that I have been in has been the diversity of experience and the diversity of learnings that I've had because of this curiosity engine that I have in me being able to stay curious.

01:10:29:25 - 01:11:03:24
Chris Castro: And I still remember when I started getting really excited about clean energy. I stumbled on algae as a biofuel, and there was a lot of research that was going into this concept of algal biofuel. How do we how do we mitigate point source emissions like coal plants and mining factories and grow the next generation of biofuels? And I remember, like for months, staying up into the wee hours and doing my own research and getting so engaged, I ended up getting an internship because of that work at Doe, because of an undergraduate dissertation on algae biofuels.

01:11:03:24 - 01:11:30:27
Chris Castro: It's called carbon capture and grow. And so it just this I think it's important to do that. I think it's important to to stay curious, to find experience, learning opportunities, to apply what you're learning and often do so outside of your comfort zone, so to speak, and, and then continue to pursue, you know, a continued love for learning and pursuit of knowledge.

01:11:30:28 - 01:11:53:27
Chris Castro: Right? You know, you'll end your degree if you're if you're if you're a student and I continue to pursue additional certifications, I just finished a course on regenerative economics, which I'm pretty excited about. Of course, I'm a lead accredited professional. I've gone through a Smart Cities professional certification, but these are different ways in which you continue to round yourself out.

01:11:53:27 - 01:12:12:04
Chris Castro: And I would just encourage you to to find those that align with your passion. Get find an organization that you feel you could build your network around, like an ideas for us or a local USBC chapter and and just stay curious.

01:12:12:06 - 01:12:26:10
Mike Collignon: Well, if Mexico can elect a climate scientist as president, maybe we can do it in the United States, too. So you're you're you're an example for many of the NBA. Chris, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

01:12:26:10 - 01:12:28:21
Chris Castro: Thank you Mike, it's my pleasure.

01:12:28:24 - 01:12:35:12
Mike Collignon: Stay tuned for more episodes of the Impact Series podcast on the Green Builder Media Network. I'm Mike Collignon and I'll see you again soon.

01:12:35:18 - 01:12:46:23
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