Jigar Shah
Co-Managing Partner, Multiplier LLC · 6 appearances on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
investorfounderexecutivehostauthor@JigarShahDC ↗LinkedIn ↗energyempire.fm ↗Wikipedia ↗
Shah founded SunEdison, pioneering the solar power purchase agreement model, and later co-founded Generate Capital. He authored Creating Climate Wealth and subsequently directed the U.S. Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, deploying over $100 billion in clean energy debt financing.
80statements → 59claims → 37claims resolved → 46%fully supported → 3.89/5average certainty → 2.49/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 13said about them ↓
17 supported 8 partly supported 12 contradicted 4 not yet assessed 18 not checkable as stated how the 59 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
17 predictions · 42 assertions · 12 opinions · 7 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 59 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 37 are resolved, 4 are not yet assessed, and 18 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Jigar argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Shah: IRS scrutiny of renewable tax equity is continuing under Trump
“During the Biden administration, there was a big crackdown by the IRS on the renewable energy sector for tax credit and tax equity policies. Around step up in basis and some of that stuff, and I think the Trump administration is continuing all of that work, an…”
Their most notable contradicted claim
Shah: Wildfire costs account for only 3-5% of PG&E rate hikes
“You know, what amounts to, I think, 15% rate increases every year for the last four years for PG&E because of uncontrolled distribution grade investments, and it's not wildfire related. Let's just be crystal clear. People call it wildfire. Three to four percen…”
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Jigar Shah on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Jigar Shah said on the Green Blueprint that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Shah: NRC is not currently the primary bottleneck for nuclear
“I would say that having done this nuclear stuff for the better part of three years, I don't know of a single project that was hurt in any material way by the NRC. Right? So I do see the NRC being a bottleneck where we're building 10 reactors a year, but we're …”
Shah: Wildfire costs account for only 3-5% of PG&E rate hikes
“You know, what amounts to, I think, 15% rate increases every year for the last four years for PG&E because of uncontrolled distribution grade investments, and it's not wildfire related. Let's just be crystal clear. People call it wildfire. Three to four percen…”
Shah: No EPC contractor will provide a guaranteed price on AP1000
“I don't think any EPC contractor wants to wrap that thing and provide you a guarantee price, but whatever, you know.”
Shah: Solar and wind generated 36% annualized returns since 2007
“Most of us who've been in the solar and wind industry have generated 36% annualized returns every single year since we were in there from 2007.”
Shah: US transformer backlog stems from avoiding VPPs, not actual shortages
“This is why we have a three-year backlog on distribution transformers. It's not because we have a shortage of distribution transformers in this country. It's because everybody wants to fix the problem using 19 eighties approaches instead of virtual power plant…”
Shah: Oil and Gas Outspends Clean Energy 20 to 1 on Influence
“I think where we are today is that the clean energy industry in the United States, in all of its forms, invests roughly five hundred billion dollars a year but pays about two hundred million dollars a year in influence. The oil and gas industry invests about t…”
Shah: Trump payment freezes will increase energy costs and private uncertainty
“But yet, I think that the actions that they're taking around freezing payments and some of the other things are going to lead to higher costs and a lot more uncertainty in the private sector, right?”
Shah: Trump wind and solar pauses are retribution for Biden oil policies
“I think turnaround is fair play. Like, I mean, I really do think that the wind and solar pauses at the Army Corps Engineers and Fish and Wildlife are, you know, retribution for a lot of the stuff that the Biden administration did, the oil and gas industry”
Shah: Trump administration will roll back wind and solar pauses to avoid blackouts
“I think they're going to be forced to pull it back too, just because it's 90% of everything that gets deployed in the grid, right? And so at some point, if none of that stuff gets deployed in the grid, we're going to have rolling blackouts.”
Shah: Clean energy platforms are selling out over cash and policy uncertainty
“There are platforms, for instance, that are for sale now. Yeah, that we don't have cash to make, make it through October, and we don't know what's going to happen, and we can't wait for certainty, and so we're selling out, right? So I think you're seeing the v…”
Shah: IRS scrutiny of renewable tax equity is continuing under Trump
“During the Biden administration, there was a big crackdown by the IRS on the renewable energy sector for tax credit and tax equity policies. Around step up in basis and some of that stuff, and I think the Trump administration is continuing all of that work, an…”
Shah: Solar Costs $30-$50/MWh Compared to $95/MWh for New Natural Gas
“Today, you know, solar power installed is, you know, 30 dollars a megawatt hour. Without the tax credits, it's 50 dollars a megawatt hour. That's more expensive than 30 dollars a megawatt hour. I get that. But that's not out of the money. Right? New natural ga…”
Shah: EVgo Is Basically Profitable Due to Higher DC Fast Charger Utilization
“EVgo is now basically profitable because of, like, they've got huge increases in the use of their DC fast chargers”
Shah: Trump's DOE will honor all closed and obligated LPO loans
“But like, for closed loans and loans that have obligated funds, I think they'll honor all those loans.”
Shah: DOGE cannot reach $2T cuts without defense, Social Security, or healthcare
“The only places that matter if you're going to get to two trillion is defense, social security, and Medicaid, and Medicare. That's the only places that matter. Like, the discretionary part of the budget is so small that it just doesn't matter. You could zero i…”
Shah: Chris Wright is a fantastic pick for Secretary of Energy
“I thought his memo was great. I thought it was well-balanced. I thought it was, you know, like, what you would have expected from a George W. Bush appointee. So, like, I think Chris Wright's a fantastic pick as the Secretary of Energy, and so I'm glad to see h…”
Jigar Shah: Battery storage additions will be tenfold natural gas deployments
“Battery storage will be heralded as the savior of the grid a year from now, and we will deploy 10 times as much battery storage as we deploy natural gas.”
Shah: Clean energy must act like the dominant industry it is
“It's important for this sector to stop acting like it's alternative. When you're 80% of everything being deployed every year, sometimes 90%, politics is part of this. So are regulations, so are lots of other things. Like, people have to make sure that they und…”
Shah: Clean energy companies must stop hiding their DOE loan applications
“People are so afraid of having anyone hate them that they're like, oh, I don't want to mention that we're a, we're an applicant to the loan programs office. I don't want to mention that we're, you know, applying for this grant or whatever else, right? That's n…”
Shah: Annual electricity load growth will likely be around 2.5%, not 7%
“I don't think we're going to have seven percent load growth every year. I think it's probably more like two and a half percent, but it's still something that we don't have the tools to deal with right now.”
Shah: Traditional utility expansion formula causes 10% annual rate hikes
“When you think about the normal course of business for most utilities is to build more natural gas plants,
Build more transmission and build more distribution.
Today, that formula results in 10% rate increases every year.
That is not workable.”
Shah: New nuclear, geothermal, and hybrid storage all cost ~$100/MWh
“And now, with all of the additional incentives, you can build a new nuclear reactor, as long as, you know, get some of the bonus credits, like energy communities, etc., at a hundred dollars a megawatt hour. Guess what else is a hundred dollars a megawatt hour?…”
Shah: Virtual power plants must be opt-out and fully automated to scale
“One, Everything needs to be opt out. This notion that we need to spend 700 dollars to, like, talk to people and beg them to opt into something is looney tunes. Like, when you hook up something, it's automatically opted into a VPP, and then we should give you a…”
Shah: Green banks must standardize loan docs and enable securitization
“In order for this to be successful long-term though, they have to figure it out securitization. And that, I think, is the biggest challenge, because a lot of these folks like doing weird stuff, and if you do too much weird stuff, then that loan will sit on you…”
The other half of the tape: Jigar Shah's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 12 times in 7 episodes on the Green Blueprint. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Stephen Lacey 5Michelle Davis 2Michael Boyle 1Katherine Hamilton 1Josh Becker 1Eric Wesoff 1Elaine Hsieh 1
Statements about Jigar Shah, by other people (1)
Wesoff: DOE has shifted from basic science to commercial project financing
“It's not the intense science-based Department of Energy of Ernest Moniz or Stephen Chu. The DOE is being helmed by Business people and industrialists like Jigar Shah, like David Crane, like Elaine Shea, and many, many others, and so we, we've gone away from a …”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2024 2 mentions in 1 episode
2023 10 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- America’s historic climate law, one year on
- Investors riff on the new era for climate investing
- Can California pull off its clean energy ambitions?
- Why electric cars are driving the auto strikes
- New frontiers of clean energy emerge
- Stunning new data on coal vs renewables
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
Appearances (6)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Open Circuit: Jigar, Katherine, and Stephen are back | Feb 19, 2025 | 19m |
| Our final episode: The top stories of 2024 so far | Jul 16, 2024 | 24m |
| Live: Is advanced nuclear ready for liftoff? | May 17, 2023 | 23m |
| America’s green industrial strategy 2.0 | May 1, 2023 | 14m |
| Are oil & gas majors abandoning clean energy? | Mar 8, 2023 | 21m |
| The make-or-break moment for America’s energy transition | Jan 19, 2023 | 15m |