Transcript
Jigar Shah: The way we power the world is changing at a fundamental level. Across the United States, clean energy now makes up more than 90% of new electricity added to the grid — not because of politics or ideology, but because these technologies simply work better.
Jamie Nolan: They're cheaper to build, faster to deploy, and easier to scale than anything we've had before.
Jigar Shah: Whether you're curious about where the economy is headed, how energy affects your daily life, or who's behind the billion-dollar deals shaping our future —
Jamie Nolan: Energy Empire is your guide to what comes next.
Introduction
Jigar Shah: Wow, is this our first real episode?
Jamie Nolan: Here we are. Yes, this is our first real episode where we have guests. People have joined us.
Jigar Shah: I know. So what's on your mind right now?
Jamie Nolan: I mean, the overturn of the endangerment finding is the big news item. It's shocking. I just think we're headed for so many lawsuits.
Jigar Shah: So many lawsuits. But I still don't know what's happening with the Venezuelan oil money. And weirdly, I just talked to a friend who was trying to convince me she was watching Netflix episodes at 1.5x. It's one thing to listen to a podcast at 1.5x, but shows that are well-produced — I feel like you can't do that.
Jamie Nolan: It hurts me. Like, what show can you watch at 1.5x and still get enjoyment? At that point, are you just consuming the content to have your water-cooler topics, or are you actually enjoying it?
Jigar Shah: I was trying to explain to her that this is someone's art form. You can't just sully their art form by listening at 1.5x.
Jamie Nolan: I'm scared about what we're going to sound like at 1.5x.
Jigar Shah: I already talk at 1.5x, so I'm not sure people can handle that.
Jamie Nolan: You do sometimes. Sometimes I'm like, Jigar, I got half of that. There's just so much in your head that you want to get out — how quickly can you exit it from your brain? It must be busy up there.
Jigar Shah: Well, now you have a responsibility to fix it. You're going to have to shut me down and tell me to slow down.
Jamie Nolan: I'm going to try. I'm actually putting together a media training for one of my clients right now and it's been reminding me of all these core fundamentals of public speaking. I may have to send you a copy when I'm done.
Jigar Shah: Yeah, you're like, how did Jigar make it this far? He has failed at least half of my best practices.
Jamie Nolan: Some things you're very good at intuitively. And other things we keep practicing.
Episode Overview
Jigar Shah: So this episode is really more introspective. I've been on the air for a long time with the Energy Gang and then Open Circuit, and now Energy Empire. But people keep telling me they don't really know much about my story.
Jamie Nolan: No one knows you. I've been saying this from the beginning — everybody loves a story, everyone loves a personal connection with the person behind the brand. And you have a great story. So I was really excited to bring in your buddy Phil Radford — former executive director of Greenpeace and currently over at Consumer Reports — to dig into your personal story and what makes you tick. I learned a lot. How did it feel talking about yourself?
Jigar Shah: We only scratched the surface. I was talking to a good friend today and he said, if you ever get those stories out of me, it'll be crazy. And he said some of this stuff was so painful going through it that you don't actually want to relive it. But I do think people can learn a lot from it.
Jamie Nolan: I really enjoyed hearing about your friend who was so influential in the founding of SunEdison and who passed away — what that loss taught you. And some of the people who've influenced you along the way. I can't wait for part two. What are we going to cover?
Jigar Shah: I think we only got through SunEdison and maybe a little of the Carbon War Room. There's more to cover.
Jamie Nolan: We've got to talk about Generate Capital, LPO, you becoming a father. It's been an adventure learning more about you. What was your big takeaway from the conversation?
Jigar Shah: When you think about where we were as an industry when we started SunEdison in 2003, we had several thousand solar systems total around the world. People still can't reckon with the fact that we're building that many every hour of every day now. We just take so much for granted today that we couldn't take for granted when we were building these companies. All of the people who used to run the Department of Energy's Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office during the Clinton administration turned me down for financing for SunEdison. They said, "We think solar's too risky." It's one of those things where people have put out of their minds all of the really important baby steps we had to take to get to where we are today.
Jamie Nolan: It's really extraordinary when you think about how far the industry has come — and it hasn't been that long. 2003 feels like it was five minutes ago.
Jigar Shah: And today, 90% of everything added to the U.S. grid is solar, wind, or battery storage. That's been true since 2020. When you think about how much of the world's incremental electricity is coming from nuclear, solar, wind, and electric vehicles — people have yet to really understand that that's true. And they certainly have no idea who is behind actually making it happen.
Jamie Nolan: So tell me — why was Phil Radford the right guest for this episode?
Jigar Shah: Phil and I met when I was at BP Solar. He's been with me on this entire journey. We talked about it over beers at the saloon right next to Ben's Chili Bowl in the heart of DC's U Street corridor. He knows the whole story. He can fill in all the gaps I've blocked out of my brain.
Jamie Nolan: Or he won't let you get away with any major omissions.
Jigar Shah: It's less omissions and more me sugarcoating things that were really a lot worse than I was describing them.
Jamie Nolan: That makes sense — you're a very committed optimist, and that's one of your best qualities. Well, I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope our listeners do too. Stay tuned for part two. If you have any pressing questions you'd like to ask Jigar about his personal story, please send them to hello@energyempire.fm.
Interview: Phil Radford on Who Jigar Shah Really Is
Jamie Nolan: Phil Radford, thanks for joining us. It's so nice to meet you — I actually can't believe this is the first time we've ever formally met.
Phil Radford: Jamie, it's great to meet you. Thanks for having me.
Jamie Nolan: So Phil, you run Consumer Reports, the nation's leading consumer protection nonprofit. But you also have the distinction of being Jigar Shah's best friend, and the two of you have known each other for more than 20 years. We wanted to bring you here to help us dig into who Jigar really is. With more than a million followers online, there's surprisingly little out there about the person behind the takes. How did you two first meet?
Phil Radford: Jigar and I first met in the year 2000 when we were both working on solar. At the time, I think there were about 200 megawatts of solar manufactured globally per year — a tiny industry. We had a vendor in common who we both pushed to do extraordinary things. He said, "I have another client just like you — this guy Jigar who works at BP. You should meet." So we met and became really good friends. We'd go to the saloon once a week, right next to Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington, DC, and co-conspire on how to transform America's energy economy.
Jamie Nolan: I've heard about this infamous dive bar near Ben's Chili Bowl. Tell me a little more about those conversations — and I heard there may or may not have been a bartender you all unknowingly influenced.
Phil Radford: That is true. A wonderful man named Robert was our bartender. I think we went to that bar because it had Jigar's favorite German import beer — the Dunkle — that you couldn't find anywhere else.
Jigar Shah: The Eggenberg Dunkel.
Phil Radford: Yes. I don't think they imported it anywhere else in the mid-Atlantic except for that bar. And there was a great bartender named Robert who overheard Jigar's passion about solar. Next thing I know, he was selling me solar on my house. He quit his job to become a solar salesman.
Jigar Shah: It was kind of hilarious — we'd have these conversations and Robert would come closer and give us better service, just listening in. Every once in a while he'd join in, and we were fine with it. It was kind of funny.
Jamie Nolan: That's amazing. Robert, hit us up if you're out there and still selling solar panels — we want to hear from you.
Jigar Shah: I think the last time I saw him was about ten years ago. He had married someone from Eastern Europe who was a yoga instructor.
Phil Radford: And I think he's still working for the same solar company.
Growing Up: Sterling, Illinois
Phil Radford: A lot of people know Jigar is a solar pioneer and one of the first clean energy podcasters. Many know he's from Illinois. His father is a wonderful, thoughtful man, and his mom is a wonderful person who runs the family. In the 80s we talked a lot about latchkey kids — kids whose parents both worked and had a key to let themselves in after school. Jigar has often described himself as a latchkey kid without the key. Jigar, what was it like growing up in rural Illinois after moving there from India as a kid?
Jigar Shah: I definitely grew up in quintessential 70s parenting. Growing up in Sterling — a rural place — my mom thought there was no need to lock the door. But weirdly, she would lock the door. So I'd come home from school and the door would be locked. We had one of those houses with fake barn two-by-fours on the outside — not structural, just decorative — and I would have to climb up the side of the house to my parents' sliding door on the second floor, because that was the one thing she never locked.
Jamie Nolan: Was this a daily occurrence?
Jigar Shah: About once a week. And my brother, who's three years younger, would try to copy me and invariably get hurt. So I had to tell him to stay downstairs while I opened the door.
Jamie Nolan: I know there was an industrial plant in your hometown that closed — that was a really impactful moment for you. Can you share more about what that was like?
Jigar Shah: Sterling is one of those rural towns where there's one big anchor — Northwestern Steel and Wire, the seventh-largest steel mill in the country. There were lots of other businesses that sprang up around it, like Wahl Clipper, which makes clippers that cut men's hair all over the world. The steel mill had a big union workforce — good, high-quality jobs. In Sterling, houses were around $70,000, so if you were making a good wage, it really stretched. Your car payment was often more than your mortgage. When the mill shut down, it devastated the town. People left. Side businesses folded. And it became very personal because you could see your friends hurting — no discretionary spending at all.
Jamie Nolan: Did that shape your worldview — your passion for American manufacturing and your views on unions?
Jigar Shah: Yeah. At the time, Jack Welch was running GE and we had four GE manufacturing facilities nearby that shut down. They were moving production to China. Growing up around all of that, you could see that there was more to the story than just "you're going to get cheap stuff." All these people in Morrison and Rock Falls had no jobs. I hadn't put all the pieces together, but it was very clear there was more to the equation.
University of Illinois and Meeting Khushali
Phil Radford: You went to the University of Illinois — one of the best engineering schools in the country. When did you meet your wife there?
Jigar Shah: She's a year behind me, so I met her my sophomore year. The way she tells the story is that I helped move them into the dorm. I honestly don't remember that. I think I remember meeting her about a month later in the dorm. But we didn't start dating until about three months before we graduated. She graduated in three years; I took the full four — probably should have taken four and a half.
Phil Radford: And then you moved to Vermont and were still together?
Jigar Shah: I had a job offer with a small wind company in Arizona. But that summer, before I started, they sent me a rescission letter — they couldn't raise the money. So I followed my wife to DC, where I did an internship at the Consumer Energy Council of America working on deregulation. I think I made $50 a week. Then I got a job at Atlantic Orea Corporation in Vermont that fall. So Khushali was still in DC and I was in Vermont.
Phil Radford: When did you know Khushali was the one?
Jigar Shah: Pretty early on. I mean, you've met her — when you meet someone like that, you're like, if she has too many choices, she's going to do better than me. You've got to lock it down quickly. I knew right away. She obviously didn't know it, so she was playing hard to get. It took a little while, but I had to lock it down.
Phil Radford: Part of what's amazing about your relationship is how you've supported each other through the years. When you started SunEdison, neither of you was sitting on large piles of cash. She had a government job, you had a small house in the U Street area, and you took out a home equity line of credit. Tell us about that leap. When was it scary? How did you manage?
Jigar Shah: My wife and I got married in 1999. I went to work for BP Solar right after that and had been working on the SunEdison business plan. She graduated from grad school around 2001 and got a job as a Presidential Management Fellow — not exactly a high-paying government job. I think she was making around $35,000 a year. We had saved up $20,000 from my time at BP Solar and had just bought our first house on U Street — a brand new place at Harrison Square.
When my dad came to help us move in, we went to get a haircut and none of the barbers in the area would cut straight hair. They said, "We don't cut straight hair here." U Street is one of the hottest neighborhoods in DC now, but at the time it was still transitioning.
Anyway, when I decided to quit BP Solar to start SunEdison, we stopped using credit cards and just split cash from the bank. That's all we could spend. And my wife said, "I'll support you on this — but only if I can continue to drink martinis at the Mayflower."
Jamie Nolan: I support that. I can only imagine what you were like in startup mode.
The Birth of SunEdison
Jamie Nolan: How did you come up with the idea for SunEdison? You're credited with creating the first-ever third-party power purchase agreement for solar — arguably the most important business model innovation that enabled the sector to be what it is today.
Jigar Shah: The concept of a power purchase agreement wasn't new. AES used PURPA — legislation that let you build your own power plants and force utilities to buy the power — to build coal plants in the 80s and 90s. And energy efficiency companies called ESCOs used shared savings contracts. So I wouldn't say I invented PPAs. But applying that model to solar was something I had been thinking about.
When I worked at AstroPower as an intern around 1995, people would come in and say the utility was charging them $40,000 to connect their ranch to electricity. They'd buy five-watt solar panels and electrify the fence that way — much cheaper. But then at the 11th hour, a tractor would break down or something else would go wrong and they'd say, "Sorry, the budget for solar panels went away." The same thing happened at the wind company I worked at in 1997. It was pretty obvious you needed dedicated financing so you weren't competing with customers' annual budgets.
I wrote the SunEdison business plan during my MBA at the University of Maryland. It was really a conglomeration of 50 different conversations. I tried hard to sell the idea within BP Solar, but after Sarbanes-Oxley passed, they didn't want to disclose the tax credit activity in their 10-Ks. And this was only a 10% tax credit — the 30% credit didn't come until the 2005 Energy Policy Act. So they were turning down this opportunity for the dumbest reason imaginable.
Phil Radford: When SunEdison launched, what worked, what didn't work, and how did you adjust?
Jigar Shah: I started SunEdison with a guy named Larry Cohen. We had brought in our friend Christy Herrick from NREL as a connection. Then around May or June of 2003, Larry said his father had died ten years earlier and he'd missed the funeral because he was too busy. He wanted to reevaluate his life, and this idea just didn't make his top three. So he was out.
BP Solar had also been completely reorganized. In February of 2003, they made everyone reapply for their jobs. I deliberately didn't reapply because I was planning to leave — we had set SunEdison up on paper in January 2003. But they assigned me a job anyway. So I had to actually quit. I milked it as long as I could, and then in August 2003 we closed our first contract — with Whole Foods.
The problem was I hadn't completed any of the formation documents. We'd filed the LLC but hadn't signed the operating agreement, so I didn't have signing authority. I called up Chris Cook, one of my co-founders and a legend in solar regulatory affairs. He said, "Well, how much stock are you giving me?" So we allocated stock to Chris and Claire Brito Johnson, and I held most of it since I was putting in the money from the home equity line.
After Whole Foods, we did Staples the next month, then Ikea the month after that. The customers came in fast and furious. The financing proved very hard. I thought it would be the opposite.
As for our first financing — I actually put part of it on my credit card. You know how credit card companies offer 0% interest for 90 days? That was me.
Phil Radford: That was your first company. Classic entrepreneur story — personal risk, credit cards, no formation documents. It was also your first time managing a lot of people and a board. Were you good at that?
Jigar Shah: Completely terrible. Not just terrible — historically bad.
Claire had insisted we submit the SunEdison business plan to the Harvard Business School Case Competition. I said we didn't need validation from them. She did it anyway. She paired us with Brian Robertson, who was running the energy club at HBS. We won the competition. Then Brian turned down the number six job at Yahoo to join us at SunEdison.
Brian had already built several companies — one of them was technology that powered Amazon's "customers also bought" recommendation engine, which he'd sold to Amazon. So he brought serious experience. Brian essentially did the work of five people — he ran fundraising and managed the board, because if I had been doing that, we would have gone out of business on day one.
What I was really good at was hustling — getting the pipeline, closing contracts. I remember once when someone disagreed with me and I actually said, "You have to do it my way because I'm the CEO." Looking back, that was the worst thing I could have said. I was a horrible manager and I did not manage the board well. To this day, my board chair at the time, David Busby, is a good friend and still needles me about how terrible I was.
Jamie Nolan: That certainly wasn't my experience at LPO. How did you improve? One of the things I've told people is that some of the secret sauce at the Loan Programs Office was your ability to attract incredible talent — people taking significant pay cuts to do that work.
Jigar Shah: The ability to sell was something I was always good at. And I was always able to attract extraordinary talent and convince them to come. At SunEdison we had what I think were the world's smartest people in solar at the time. We had nine or twelve full-time lawyers, which basically constituted the largest solar law firm in the world.
But I was bad at the operational side — weekly meetings, KPIs, aligning incentives. When I started the Carbon War Room with Richard Branson, a guy named Peter Boyd joined us who cared deeply about management and would teach me constantly. He helped us at LPO too. Then at Generate Capital, we had a formal executive coach and I met with that coach every month. Management is a science like anything else. At SunEdison I was so focused on selling solar that I wasn't focused on getting better at running a company.
SunEdison's Failure and the Lessons It Taught
Phil Radford: SunEdison ultimately failed. What are your thoughts on why, and what did you learn?
Jigar Shah: Several things contributed. In late 2006 or early 2007, we got an offer to buy the company from FirstSolar. I was dead set against selling — we were doing great, why would we? Bryan Robertson convinced me I was an idiot and that we should sell. At the time I would have made about $80 million. Their stock price subsequently went up 5x, so I would have made even more. But a Goldman Sachs partner blocked the sale — he had the right to and claimed I had misled him about something, which to this day I have no idea what it was.
So we brought in a new CEO, raised more money, and then the 2008 financial crisis hit. I had already been warming up MEMC to buy the company, but they replaced their CEO. I had to convince the new CEO, resign from the board to make it work, and in the end I netted five million dollars from a sale I thought would bring me eighty. The lesson I tell people today: you might be worth whatever you say on paper, but when you actually cash out it might be a much smaller number.
After I sold to MEMC, the one thing I told them was: the reason SunEdison worked is we always used other people's money. If you can't convince a bank to give you a construction loan, you're not smarter than that bank. But their CEO ignored that and started constructing every project in our pipeline simultaneously with cash from the balance sheet, with no buyers lined up. That worked initially, but he kept doubling down. They started acquiring companies and when the stock price would jump, they'd convince themselves they were manufacturing value. When Wall Street finally figured out they were overpaying, the stock cratered.
One of the big lessons: when you sell something or walk away from something, it's not yours anymore. You can't be emotionally tied to it. It wasn't me who made those decisions. SunEdison didn't fail — the people who bought the company from me and ran it into the ground failed. That's a pattern that repeats. Whether it's the Carbon War Room or Generate Capital or LPO — you have to turn the page.
Jamie Nolan: I'm smiling because I've gotten this lecture many times throughout 2025. I still have feelings about LPO.
Jigar Shah: It's both and, right? Your mental sanity is what I'm trying to protect. But it's also genuinely sad. When you think about what SunEdison could have become had they been disciplined, they would have been NextEra — not tied to a utility, but a pure-play "we're going to conquer the world" solar company. The world would be different today. And the same is true with LPO. When we left, we had $300 billion worth of loans unprocessed. Today, if you want to do big things in this country, you'd never go to LPO — the current administration has spent its time badmouthing it. I'm not emotionally tied to it, but I'm sad for our country that they've destroyed the reputation of an office that entrepreneurs need.
Jamie Nolan: And then there's the human impact. Going back to your hometown and all the plants that closed — that's what I feel most. And there were some very bad days this spring. But you've always been there to brush me off, tell me to wipe my tears away, and move on to the next thing. I do appreciate that.
Jigar Shah: Turn the page.
Phil Radford: And if you listen to the list of people you've both been talking about — the talent passes through institutions, but the legacy in many ways is the people you invest in and what they continue to do in new formations.
Jigar Shah: When we were at SunEdison, we set up the entire Indian solar market. I had a contact in Delhi who would open doors even though I was too smart to do direct business with him. We provided free engineering — people asked why we weren't charging for it, and I said because you need to see that we can do it. SunEdison ended up with the number one market share because people had a good feeling about the brand.
Today, India is ten years ahead of schedule compared to China on solar deployment. They're going to cap out on coal at one-fourth the per-capita level of China. When you think about all the people who worked for SunEdison India — they are now the CEOs of every major institution or company in India. I don't know who gets credit for that butterfly effect. But it brings a tear to your eyes to think that so many fewer children are dying from coal pollution in India, and that so much development work there was accelerated because of what we did.
The Carbon War Room
Phil Radford: Between LPO and SunEdison, you joined Sir Richard Branson as founding CEO of the Carbon War Room. Tell us about that work.
Jigar Shah: When I left SunEdison, a bunch of people called asking if I would run their solar division. That didn't seem like my best and highest use. A headhunter called me for this job and I had to fly to San Francisco to meet Richard Branson in the Virgin Lounge — Virgin America was launching a new route at the time. He had a napkin, basically. That was all he had for the concept of the Carbon War Room.
One of the things I've always been good at is mapping out complicated systems and figuring out how to beat them. For a nonprofit, the most important thing is that your main benefactor loves what you're doing. I quickly got onto the idea that entrepreneurs — not big Fortune 500 companies — were the ones who were going to decarbonize the world.
At the time, Waxman-Markey was moving through the House. The whole concept of that legislation was to pay off all the Fortune 500 companies — you get free credits, you get free credits. The plan was to bribe large corporations into caring about climate change. When we said those guys are always beholden to their shareholders, and the only way to solve this problem is through entrepreneurs — that was a crazy, radical idea at the time.
One of our biggest campaigns was in the shipping industry. We realized we weren't going to pass legislation — other nonprofits were doing that. What we could do was ask the entrepreneurs who had great technologies to reduce shipping industry fuel consumption by 40%. We kept asking: why isn't anyone buying these efficiency products? It turned out the way you hire a ship is like renting a U-Haul — you pay the daily rate and cover fuel yourself. So the ship company has no incentive to improve fuel economy. The person chartering the ship does, because they pay the fuel bill.
We realized that if we published the fuel economy data of every single ship in the world, Walmart would only hire ships with low fuel usage. Walmart saved $500 million in the first year of using our database. We shifted 3% of global shipping traffic with that database. And suddenly all the ship companies wanted efficiency products to help them close better deals. That was a fascinating example of how a nonprofit can work.
Jamie Nolan: How long were you there?
Jigar Shah: I was recruited in early 2009, started in June or July of 2009, and left at the end of 2012.
The Energy Gang and the Power of Podcasting
Phil Radford: You've been a long-time podcaster. You teamed up with Catherine Hamilton and Steven Lacey to launch the Energy Gang. What inspired that?
Jigar Shah: One of the things I've always been very good at is spotting extraordinary individuals early in their career. Steven Lacey is one of the people who has always been ridiculously impressive to me. He was at Renewable Energy World — I think the first podcasts were around 2006, when you had to listen through your browser and if you closed the window the audio would stop. But the way Steven told stories was really, really good.
At the time, the Slate Political Gabfest was getting big. I told Steven we needed our own version — where you rip three stories from the headlines and go deep. I was frustrated because all the clean energy news stories were just "this company raised this much money, this company signed this contract." There was never any behind-the-scenes commentary: how did that deal come together? What would you need to know to replicate it?
Steven asked who the third person would be, and we both said: Catherine Hamilton. She's a baller. She'd be amazing. She always had imposter syndrome the whole time we were doing it — she'd interview twelve people before each episode to prepare. But she and her husband Dave are two of the smartest people you'll ever meet. We were so lucky to have gotten her to say yes.
Phil Radford: You're on the record a lot — making projections, spotting trends, predicting the future. Sometimes you're right. What are some of your best calls and some of the ones you got wrong?
Jigar Shah: Just give it time — they'll all be on the mark eventually.
I was a big proponent — if not the author — of the utility death spiral. I don't think that's come to fruition. The utility has never been more central to how AI and everything else is moving forward. That was clearly off the mark.
One that surprised me: right before the 2020 election, Steven Lacey asked me on the Energy Gang whether LPO had a shot if Biden won. I said, "No way. LPO is irredeemable. LPO will never be able to get anyone to trust them ever again." That was clearly wrong.
But I've had a lot of hot takes, many of which were bad. What I found interesting about podcasting is that — and I don't mean this in any manipulative way — a lot of people just want to be told how to think. Am I supposed to be for hydrogen or against hydrogen? For renewable natural gas or against it? People want to hear takes from others to help them form their views. And as a result, a lot of money moved. I know for a fact there are a lot of people who invested in things we were doing at Generate Capital because they heard about it on the podcast.
The Vision for Energy Empire
Phil Radford: So what are your goals for this new podcast?
Jigar Shah: Last year we invested $3.3 trillion into the energy industry, and $2.2 trillion of that was clean. About a trillion was not. And everyone thinks it's the opposite.
If you're India right now, spending 5% of your entire GDP to import fossil fuels — you're not trying to find more oil and gas. You're figuring out how to ramp up electric vehicles, electric two-wheelers, solar power. So then the question becomes: if that's what India is doing, who would you turn to for advice? None of those names are household names. They should all be household names.
Part of the purpose of this podcast is to bring on all of the people who are actually changing the world — helping India decarbonize, helping Cincinnati or New York build back smarter after a natural disaster, solving the home insurance crisis. There's an answer for every one of those questions. And it's shocking to me that I know who they are but no one else has ever met those people.
I think part of what we want to do is convince people that our technologies are not "emerging" or "alternative." They're dominant. They're just what we now call dominant energy. And the people behind dominant energy — not just the for-profit players, but the politicians doing the best work, the nonprofit leaders who are crushing it, the people in finance betting big on new nuclear or new geothermal — I don't think people know who they are. I think they should.
Jamie Nolan: Absolutely. We cannot repeat enough that 90% of everything added to the U.S. grid last year was clean — and I do not think 80 to 90% of Americans know that. We are dominant energy. It's almost like the whole industry has collective imposter syndrome, and we need to act like winners. We're here to bring those winners on, share their stories in a digestible way, and tell these very human stories about how all of this innovation came to be.
Jigar Shah: And part of that is bringing Phil on regularly to keep me honest about my own journey over the last 20 years. But more importantly, it's about convincing folks to drop the imposter syndrome. If we're going to solve the problem in front of us, it's going to be people from our industry.
Outro
Phil Radford: Jigar, one of those people we lost along the way was Brian Robertson, who passed away tragically. As you reflect on your journey — from Sterling to University of Illinois to Maryland to SunEdison to Sir Richard Branson — what are your reflections on the people, the legacy, and the relationships you've had?
Jigar Shah: Brian is always going to be an extraordinarily special person to me. I mean, I could sell solar to anyone, close any contract, get things done — but unless you can actually run a company and raise money, you're going to struggle. Brian did the work of five people. When Goldman Sachs would send us questions, it was always 106 of them, and Brian and I would stay up until three in the morning getting all the data together.
Brian had insisted — as a startup company — that we all get Verizon cell phone cards for our laptops so we'd always have internet. He never rented a car; he always took a taxi so he could keep working. At the time I thought he was being extravagant. Looking back, the amount of work he got done in those hours was absolutely worth the $60 ride.
For us to have lost somebody that early in his career — and for his wife and his three extraordinary children — it just makes you want to make sure that you live every day to the fullest. There's not a day that goes by where I'm like, wait, I can't just sit on the couch. Brian wouldn't have just sat on the couch. We've got to get stuff done. When you meet people with that level of energy and you're inspired by them, that inspiration never goes away.
Jamie Nolan: Thank you for this, Jigar. I learned so much about you. And Phil, thank you for being here with us to get stories out of Jigar he might not have told on his own. I'm really excited for part two.
Jigar Shah: You're going to have to pry them out of me. It's a weird thing — I just don't talk about myself that much. I care a lot more about the substance.
Jamie Nolan: People want to know. They want to know the man behind the brand.
Jigar Shah: Well, thanks for coming on, Phil. It was so great to have you and thanks for being generous with your time and your friendship for so many years.
Phil Radford: My pleasure. And if you subscribe to the paid version, I'll send you really funny photos of Jigar as a high schooler.
Jigar Shah: He actually does have those. They are bad.
Jamie Nolan: Simon could always flash some of those up on the screen. The people need to see them.
Phil Radford: You have to pay for the premium podcast! Thank you for having me.