Jigar Shah is an energy entrepreneur, investor, and strategist who was featured on the 2024 TIME100 list of the world’s most influential people. He co-founded Multiplier to help entrepreneurs achieve better exits.

Most recently, Jigar oversaw the reinvigoration of the Loan Programs Office at the U.S. Department of Energy, where he helped inspire hundreds of entrepreneurs and innovators choose to invest in the USA to onshore manufacturing, innovative project finance, and tribal energy. 

Prior to joining the DOE, Shah co-founded and served as the President of Generate Capital, the leading investment and operating platform for distributed energy storage, microgrids, fuel cells, electric vehicles, and organic waste management. He also founded SunEdison, the inventor of the modern solar-as-a-service industry and served as the founding CEO of the Carbon War Room, a global non-profit founded by Sir Richard Branson to help entrepreneurs address climate change. Shah is the author of Creating Climate Wealth: Unlocking the Impact Economy, a book that outlines his mission to scale the transition to a global clean energy economy.

Every week he co-hosts a podcast, Open Circuit by Latitude Media.

"For the first time in my professional career, we have a utility company formally agreeing with the fact that distributed power plants are essential to maintaining reliability and meeting load growth. This is a huge win for our entire industry, and efforts by industry groups to torpedo this proposal can’t see the forest for the trees.

Once this fact becomes part of the record, all future resource planning must treat distributed storage as a serious, cost-effective mechanism for growing capacity on the grid. Indeed, this is the beginning of a new era in which distribution-tied storage will be a core pillar of the growth of the grid. That reality fundamentally strengthens the position of the entire distributed energy resource (DER) ecosystem."

Jigar Shah

Jigar Shah is the Director for the Loan Programs Office at the U.S. Department of Energy, where he leads and directs the organization's considerable loan authority within manufacturing, innovative project finance, and tribal energy. With more than 25 years of experience in clean energy, he is an expert in project finance, clean technology, and entrepreneurship, as well as a visionary leader and innovator in the field of sustainable infrastructure.

Prior to joining the DOE, Shah co-founded and served as the President of Generate Capital, the leading investment and operating platform for distributed energy storage, microgrids, fuel cells, electric vehicles, and organic waste management. He also founded SunEdison, the inventor of the modern solar-as-a-service industry, and served as the founding CEO of the Carbon War Room, a global non-profit founded by Sir Richard Branson to help entrepreneurs address climate change. Shah is the author of Creating Climate Wealth: Unlocking the Impact Economy, a book that outlines his mission to scale the transition to a global clean energy economy.

Co-Managing Partner of Multiplier

As we gather this Thanksgiving, I find myself grateful not only for family, friends and good food, but also for the extraordinary opportunity — and responsibility — we share in this moment. We live in a time when we can choose to build, to improve, to leave the world better than we found it.

I’ve long believed that the clean energy industry is ready to solve big challenges and unlocking job creation and wealth creation. You wouldn’t know it from all of the media. But load growth is accelerating the transition to clean, affordable energy.

Dreams and ideas alone aren’t enough. To turn them into real change, we need action, commitment — and the courage to take on what feels “impossible.”

I can’t name a single sector that scales easily — every one of them is their own kind of impossible. 

This Thanksgiving, I want to thank all of you — entrepreneurs, clean-energy pioneers, community leaders, and everyday people — who step up, who build, who believe that we can do big things again. 

Because when we do, we don’t just create technologies or companies — we create opportunities, jobs, a healthier planet, and a brighter future for our children.

Let’s enjoy this holiday — recharge, reflect, and gather our energy for what comes next. Because there’s more work to do.

The most important technologies have been invented here. I’m very proud of that. Now we have to manufacture here and deploy them at scale. 

Happy Thanksgiving — and thank you for being part of the journey.

Incredible article. My immigrant parents figured out how to stretch a dollar but still more than 3X our food budget…

“What I found explains the “vibes” of the economy better than any CPI print.

Our entire safety net is designed to catch people at the very bottom, but it sets a trap for anyone trying to climb out. As income rises from $40,000 to $100,000, benefits disappear faster than wages increase.

I call this The Valley of Death.

Let’s look at the transition for a family in New Jersey:

1. The View from $35,000 (The “Official” Poor)

At this income, the family is struggling, but the state provides a floor. They qualify for Medicaid (free healthcare). They receive SNAP (food stamps). They receive heavy childcare subsidies. Their deficits are real, but capped.

2. The Cliff at $45,000 (The Healthcare Trap)

The family earns a $10,000 raise. Good news? No. At this level, the parents lose Medicaid eligibility. Suddenly, they must pay premiums and deductibles.

Income Gain: +$10,000
Expense Increase: +$10,567
Net Result: They are poorer than before. The effective tax on this mobility is over 100%.
3. The Cliff at $65,000 (The Childcare Trap)

This is the breaker. The family works harder. They get promoted to $65,000. They are now solidly “Working Class.”

But at roughly this level, childcare subsidies vanish. They must now pay the full market rate for daycare.”

Founder | Investor 📈 Helping Family Offices & HNWIs Access Private Market Returns with Impact | Helping Founders Raise Capital Without Compromise | VC · PE · Real Estate · Credit

$1 billion.

That's what Base Power just raised for home batteries - the largest Series C in residential energy infrastructure history.

Let me put this in perspective:
Most climate tech startups struggle to raise $50 million. Base Power just closed 20x that amount in a single round.

Led by Addition, with Google's CapitalG, Andreessen Horowitz, Lowercarbon Capital, and 10+ other top-tier funds piling in.

For home batteries.

Not fusion reactors. Not flying cars. Batteries in people's homes.

Here's why this matters:

→ The grid is the bottleneck

AI data centres need massive power. EVs need charging infrastructure. Heat pumps need capacity. Every electrification project hits the same wall: our grid can't handle it.

Base Power's solution? Turn 100,000 homes into a distributed power plant.

→ Virtual power plants are infrastructure, not software

Homeowners lease battery packs. They get backup power. They sell excess electricity back to the grid. Base Power networks them into a virtual power plant.

This isn't a climate tech moonshot. It's a real business solving a real problem today.

→ Residential energy is the new frontier

$1 billion for a Series C signals something bigger: residential distributed energy is now institutional-grade infrastructure.

Energy isn't just being generated differently. It's being stored, distributed, and monetised differently.

The three reasons institutional capital is flooding in:

1/ Policy-independent business model
Works regardless of government incentives. Homeowners save money. Utilities get grid stability. Economics work without subsidies.

2/ Massive addressable market
160 million homes in the US alone. Each one is a potential node in the network. This scales horizontally.

3/ AI power demand is insatiable
Every AI breakthrough requires exponentially more computing power. Computing requires electricity. The grid can't deliver it fast enough.

Bottom line:
Whilst everyone debates whether "climate tech is back," smart capital is deploying billions into the infrastructure that makes electrification possible.

If you're a founder building distributed energy, grid flexibility, or energy storage solutions, institutional capital is hunting for you.

If you're an investor who thinks climate infrastructure is "too capital intensive," you just watched a $1 billion Series C close in residential batteries.

The energy transition isn't happening in solar farms and wind turbines alone.

It's happening in living rooms.


P.S. I'm actively connecting family offices with distributed energy infrastructure opportunities. If you're building in this space or want exposure to these deals, let's connect.

Sources: Tech Funding News, Bloomberg, GeekWire |  Linkedin News

Not gonna happen by 2040, but completely agree that our landfills contain treasure.

“Landfills won’t be environmental liabilities we pay to maintain. They’ll be mineral deposits we pay to access.”

Enhanced Rock Weathering sits at the intersection of climate mitigation, sustainable agriculture, and ecosystem restoration. It doesn’t require futuristic hardware or speculative chemistry—it uses geology, farming, and time, supported by modern science.

One of ERW’s biggest advantages is that it improves the land while removing carbon:
- Raises soil pH especially in acidified regions
- Releases beneficial nutrients like magnesium, calcium, and potassium
- Enhances nutrient uptake and can improve yields
- Reduces fertilizer needs
- Buffers watersheds and contributes to ocean alkalinity
- Supports shell-forming marine life by countering acidification
- Farmers are our partners and share the net carbon credit proceeds

If we act now, ERW can sequester a gigaton of carbon each year—boosting rural economies, improving soil health, supporting climate resilience, and delivering durable climate benefits for generations.

Written with Heather Langsner, Basic Dust SPC

https://lnkd.in/eg3ETapz

“Electricity rates for residential and business customers in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas are 24% lower than the national average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That won’t seem low enough to Texan households struggling to pay bills, but rates would be substantially higher without the solar power and energy storage capacity brought online here in recent years. We’ve seen the results of this development in the AI-powered wholesale price forecasts we produce for ERCOT.

Amperon’s data shows that both day ahead and real time market prices have trended down significantly over the last four years as ERCOT’s solar capacity has increased by more than 200%.”

Extraordinary new paper highlighting how “Bring Your Own Capacity” is the big unlock for data centers

“Using real utility transmission models and system-level capacity analysis, this study by Camus, encoord, and Princeton University's ZERO Lab reveals how flexible grid connections and bring-your-own capacity can unlock faster, more affordable access to power. Designed for utilities, data center developers, regulators, and industry analysts, this white paper offers the first repeatable blueprint for evaluating flexible data centers.”

Camus Energy  
Voltus 

https://lnkd.in/esCVVHQu

"AI data centers represent the most significant opportunity for grid economics in a generation.

Today’s electric grid operates at less than 40% utilization for much of the year. When AI data centers are interconnected strategically to leverage existing capacity, they don’t strain the system— they optimize it. By spreading fixed grid costs across substantially more kilowatt-hours, these AI facilities become catalysts for lower rates and accelerated infrastructure investment."

"Our analysis of a 1 GW of data center deployment in a representative mid-sized electric utility with one million customers shows:
- Customer rates can decrease by nearly 5%—providing tangible relief to millions of Americans. 
- Over $1.35 billion in new capital investment becomes justifiable— without any rate increases. 
- Critical grid modernization accelerates—funded by new revenue streams rather than ratepayer burden."

- GridCARE

AI data centers represent the most significant opportunity

Tying data center development to direct benefit for Virginians would make it easier for the Governor-elect to navigate. 

“If we converted the 440,000 Virginia households that use inefficient electric resistance heating to efficient heat pumps, it would create about 1.6 gigawatts of capacity and save families roughly $1,500 a year. If we add rooftop solar to suitable single-family homes — along with and battery storage — it adds another 4 gigawatts, all at costs below most new sources of power generation.

Together, that’s 5.6 gigawatts — about a quarter of Virginia’s projected demand growth over the next five years.”

Founder, President and CEO, Rewiring America. Building the lower cost, bountiful future for everyone.

Nowhere on Earth has a higher concentration of data centers than Virginia. 


There are already around 10 gigawatts of these energy-hungry complexes in the state — and demand is surging. That strain is driving up prices for everyone.

Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger pledged in her victory speech to make sure data center operators and utilities “pay their fair share” in Virginia’s current energy crisis. There’s a clear path forward to show what that really looks like — and it starts with electrifying households.

Thanks to the The Virginian-Pilot for running our op-ed, “What ‘Paying a Fair Share’ Should Mean for Virginia’s Data Centers” (link in the comments) by myself and Alex Laskey, my Rewiring America co-founder.

In our Homegrown Energy report, we found that if data center operators help fund electric home upgrades, such as converting homes with electric resistance heating to heat pumps or adding rooftop solar and battery storage, they can harness the fastest, cleanest, and fairest pathway to solve our energy issues.

If we converted the 440,000 Virginia households that use inefficient electric resistance heating to efficient heat pumps, it would create about 1.6 gigawatts of capacity and save families roughly $1,500 a year. If we add rooftop solar to suitable single-family homes — along with and battery storage — it adds another 4 gigawatts, all at costs below most new sources of power generation.
Together, that’s 5.6 gigawatts — about a quarter of Virginia’s projected demand growth over the next five years.

Investing in households to meet rising energy demand is the clear choice for a win-win-win path forward for Virginia’s residents, economy, and grid stability.

“We can fix what's right in front of us while we figure out the bigger-picture unlocks. A simple agenda for utilities and regulators: 1️⃣ Run annual "rate-fit" checks on every customer using smart-meter data and notify when a cheaper plan exists. 2️⃣ Put the comparison on the bill (or customer portal) and make switching one click. 3️⃣ Offer bill protection for first-year switchers to kill the fear of trying. 4️⃣ Track and publish switching/savings metrics so this stays a kitchen-table win, not a press release.”

Senior Advisor and Podcaster

“I have a hypothetical question, but just as a theoretical exercise, if we are all in the pursuit of cheap and plentiful energy, and if as part of that pursuit, you could choose between two options, you could either wave a magic wand and get a bunch of nuclear reactors scattered around America, or you could wave a magic wand and get huge advances in battery technology across America. Which of those would be most conducive to having that cheap and plentiful energy supply?

Yeah, I mean, I'm going to make a lot of my friends unhappy with this one, but I'd probably go batteries and storage. I think there are some natural economic advantages and wide swaths of the country for relatively affordable, even without subsidies, solar production in particular, and batteries seem like a pretty good natural match to that. It really has been in the kind of Texas story to date, the pairing of batteries and solar together with natural gas additions that have supported really the only electricity market that has been growing without data centers.

So, I would take that as the leading indicator. That's not to speak ill of my friends in the nuclear bro community. I hope that the technology advances that seem to be occurring in the small modular space come to fruition.

I just, so far, I don't see a lot of people laying down serious capital on that from a commercial perspective, but I do see people laying down money on storage.”

Travis Kavulla  
Tracy Alloway  
Joe Weisenthal   

https://lnkd.in/eF8DWAvu

“Firms like Fluence, Stem Inc., and Tesla Energy are seeing growing demand for storage and microgrid solutions. Pilot programs backed by DOE may open new markets for software-driven load management.”

“Whether this moment becomes a crisis or a correction depends on how quickly policymakers, utilities, and investors adapt. The tools exist—firm generation, smart load management, and modern transmission. But without faster coordination and realistic incentives, the U.S. risks trading energy abundance for energy fragility.”

- Robert Rapier

I’m proud to join the independent judging panel for the Reuters Events: Global Energy Awards 2026! 
https://lnkd.in/ebC4-ES5 
 
This is more than an awards program, it’s a global platform to connect, learn, and celebrate the innovators shaping the new energy landscape. 

Can’t wait to see the solutions, projects and people that will define the future of energy! 

Submissions are now open – find out more info here: 
https://lnkd.in/ebC4-ES5

Welcome to the Electrostate. Alternatives to petroleum are nascent and will require a WWII like ramp up. Affordability will require coordination and sophistication — something we have not seen from the Electric Utility industry to date. 

“Energy Return on Investment—the ratio of energy obtained to energy expended in extraction—is the most important metric never discussed in financial media. Conventional oil fields discovered in the 1930s through 1960s delivered EROI ratios of 100:1. By the 1990s, this had declined to 30:1 for new conventional discoveries. Today’s figures reveal a system approaching criticality: deepwater offshore now averages 10:1, while marginal US shale formations have collapsed to 5:1.

The threshold for maintaining industrial civilization, according to biophysical economics research led by Dr. Charles Hall at SUNY, sits at approximately 10:1. Below this ratio, an increasing proportion of gross energy production must be reinvested into the energy system itself, leaving less for the broader economy. At 3:1, oil extraction becomes energy-negative for non-transport applications—you burn more energy extracting and refining the barrel than the barrel contains.”

https://lnkd.in/e9DQPV3T

Imagine getting this triggered by solar and battery storage reaching 8% of the Texas market. Basically identifying an edge case presented by a think tank and making an argument against diversifying the electricity mix based on absurd assumptions. 

Today off-grid NG is also being abandoned by almost everyone because it can’t reach 99.999% uptime. This is why folks are looking at islanding for 200-500 hours a year. It makes the engineering simpler.

Embrace the many forms of electricity generation and thank your lucky stars we have so many hard working men and women not deterred by all of the rhetoric as they deliver 50 GW of solar and batteries to support the US grid this year.

We would all be better served by a more reasonable conversation.

VP Engineering at Liberty Energy

In a recent report (https://lnkd.in/grStm9xC), Ember claims that 6 GW of solar generation capacity with 17 GWh of battery storage can serve 97% of a continuous 1 GW load throughout the year in places like Las Vegas. They call this “baseload” solar. Yes, you read that correctly: to make up for the intermittency of sunshine, a solar system needs to be 6x overbuilt and have 17 hours of battery life to fight through the night and part of a cloudy day. In many cases, that system is nowhere near big enough to provide the “continuous” power desired for electricity as a service.

In Germany, it only reaches 53% of load served, but the provided load is not close to the desired 1 GW during when the R is in the month. In a recent post (https://lnkd.in/g34hpNtK), we have talked about the impact of increasing load served on Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE), mostly in an effort to define a LFSCOE - a Full System LCOE at various levels of “baseload”. The graph below shows an example of this for Germany. 

What we generally hear about is the LCOE of “unfirmed” solar - solar without backup, which works an unpredictable 9.2% of the time in Germany, or about a 16-hour workweek. The unpredictable worker costs $110/MWh. 

Making this worker more reliable through the addition of 4-hr battery backup, something Lazard, the industry keeper of LCOE (https://lnkd.in/gVaHyKN2) calls “firmed”, increases load served to ~25%, and brings LCOE to $140/MWh. However, 4 hours of battery storage does not get you through a dark night, let alone a long and wet German winter.

Getting to 80% load served with solar costs about $240/MWh. 100% and 90% load served can be achieved in Germany for an LFSCOE of $1,400/MWh and ~$376/MWh, respectively, but it requires a 50 - 100x overbuild in capacity. As an apples-to-apples reference, that compares to $110/MWh and $80/MWh for natural gas power in the United States for a similar load served.

This is the challenge with “baseload” solar. If you build a system for summer it is cheap, but not ready for winter; if you build a system for winter, it is expensive due to a need to overbuild and generate massive curtailment. If there are large (absolute) load swings between the seasons, like in Germany, load served and curtailments are impossible to get right. 

It is time organizations like Lazard implemented this in their LFSCOE comparisons. Cost, and other consequences for space requirements and carbon footprint are further discussed here: https://lnkd.in/gyZmA9p2

#energy #electricity #renewables #hydropower #solarpower #windpower #oilgas #coal #nuclear #nuclearpower #energiewende #energytransition #greenenergy #cleanenergy #innovation #capacityfactor #Germany #LCOE #LFSCOE

"The problem is not that we fail to hit the objectives we set for ourselves. It’s that the drumbeat of bad-faith nihilism encourages us to forget the progress we’ve already made, and lower our ambitions for the future."

bloomberg.com

How the World Is Quietly Winning on Climate

Cynthia A. Phillips, PhD

All of the major hyperscalers have large renewable energy positions and need traders to manage their basis risk. They could hire external firms (and they do) but at some point it is something they have to actively manage internally. 

This is why all of them are looking at batteries to hedge their positions, easiest most flexible way to do it.

Global Head of Grid Edge at Wood Mackenzie

I spoke to Bloomberg about Meta's new foray into energy trading. This isn't a new business venture, simply a necessity given the long-term contracts they're signing with power plant developers. These contracts no doubt include take-or-pay clauses, meaning Meta and its big tech peers will need to be able to market power that they've committed to taking but can't use at a given moment.
 
Significantly, Meta reveals that PJM and MISO are two markets it is focused on. Derisking power plant development in both markets is critical, as the price of energy and capacity are far below levels that would incent merchant generation. PJM, by many accounts, is a broken market, unable to efficiently connect generation and with pricing failing to reflect exorbitant looming demand or the cost of new entry.
 
Long-term contracts between data center developers and generation developers, supported by data center market trading, is certainly the direction things are trending. PJM itself is likely to enshrine this as its recommended model when it files with FERC before the end of the year.
 
(Syndicated here, for those without Bloomberg access: https://lnkd.in/eJgdiVnp)

https://lnkd.in/esDai7c5

So fun to be on this podcast with my friend Sanjeev Krishnan!

Understanding the dynamics around how to get people excited about investing into new sectors is bit crazy. People just want permission to do bold and exciting things!

We’re elated to sit down with Jigar Shah for today’s episode of the #S2GPodcast!

Throughout his career spanning entrepreneurship, policy, and finance, Jigar has consistently argued that affordability and efficiency must be at the heart of the energy transition. 

While challenges remain, we live in extraordinary times when proven, scalable solutions like solar, batteries, heat pumps, and home weatherization can dramatically improve efficiency and lower costs. 

Jigar and S2G’s Sanjeev Krishnan discuss the discipline and creativity required to build fit-for-purpose capital markets and business models that can unlock/deploy these technologies, making clean energy more affordable and accessible for all.

Watch their full conversation: https://lnkd.in/gF8Y72gt

#Energy #EnergyTransition #Renewables #Economy #Policy #Podcast *Multiplier

My friends Betony Jones and Vanessa Grisko fill in the blanks left in DOE’s US Energy Employment Report from earlier this year.

From 2021 to 2024, the energy workforce enjoyed four straight years of growth, reaching 8.5 million Americans.

The real source of that growth? Clean energy, which accounted for four out of five new energy jobs last year and rose to a share of 44% of all energy jobs.

Solar, wind, batteries, demand flexibility, energy efficiency—virtually every clean energy subsector added jobs, in every state.

These are the only sectors with the scale to meet the load growth in front of us over the next few years. We ignore that at our own risk.

Read more here: energyemployment.us

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