CleanTech: A ‘David-like’ RE firm in a Herculean energy transition goal
An Article featuring our Client and Partner CleanTech Global Renewables Inc. Posted in the Manila Bulletin
Published April 6, 2021, 8:00 AM
Conventional wisdom often paints the power sector as a “game for the big boys” – but in the country’s lofty ‘energy transition’ goal, even the “David-like players” are leading the way.
They may not be as gigantic as their counterpart-conglomerates in terms of track record and longevity, financial muscle and even human resources, but several start-ups or emerging companies in the renewable energy (RE) sector are equally razor-sharp and passionate about advancing their blueprinted projects to commercial developments. And on the bigger facet of business goalposts, there is that fervent desire for these companies to become part of the country’s elusive quest for energy security and sustainability that are heavily anchored on protecting the environment.
Engineer Salvador Antonio R. Castro Jr, President and CEO of CleanTech Global Renewables Inc. at their completed solar project in San Ildefonso, Bulacan.
One of these firms is CleanTech Global Renewables, a company founded by Salvador Antonio R. Castro Jr., a former team manager of the country’s basketball team Gilas and a well-entrenched sportsman before the corporate world pulled him back into the fold – this time, on the sphere of energy project development.
Armed with a BS Chemical Engineering degree from the University of the Philippines, Castro – who is mostly known to peers and colleagues in sports and corporates as “Aboy” (his nickname), first worked with state-run National Power Corporation then moved to work as an engineer for a multinational corporation before he delved into sports.
His detour from sports tugged him again into the corporate orbit in 2015; and that’s when his company CleanTech pushed for the commercial development of its first utility-scale solar installation of 15 megawatts in San Ildefonso, Bulacan, a venture that made it to the feed-in-tariff (FIT) incentive scheme, a policy dangled by the government until 2016 to whet investors’ appetite in RE developments.