--- title: Jigar Shah Has a $400 Billion Checkbook to Grow Clean Tech description: Financing the energy transition is a massive conundrum. Jigar Shah can provide a key puzzle piece—for the businesses that work with him. canonical: https://time.com/6277072/jigar-shah-interview-climate-tech/ author: Justin Worland article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-05-04T17:35:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:14.201Z article:section: Climate og:title: Jigar Shah Is Using His $400 Billion Checkbook to Rapidly Scale Up Clean Tech og:description: But using it Is harder than you may think. og:url: https://time.com/6277072/jigar-shah-interview-climate-tech/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2b8de04c871ee9cb/698a3c8bd075335e9de6dfb5/jigar-shah-doe-loan-program-office.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Key Speakers At CERAWeek 2023 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Jigar Shah Is Using His $400 Billion Checkbook to Rapidly Scale Up Clean Tech twitter:description: But using it Is harder than you may think. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2b8de04c871ee9cb/698a3c8bd075335e9de6dfb5/jigar-shah-doe-loan-program-office.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Jigar Shah Is Using His $400 Billion Checkbook to Rapidly Scale Up Clean Tech > Sponsored content. 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He stars in a Netflix documentary. And when people talk about the practical steps needed to slow climate change, they talk about his work._  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent May 4, 2023 5:35 PM UTC  Jigar Shah, director of the loan office at the US Department of Energy, speaks during the 2023 CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston on March 9 Jigar Shah, director of the loan office at the US Department of Energy, speaks during the 2023 CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston on March 9 Aaron M. Sprecher—Bloomberg via Getty Images  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent May 4, 2023 5:35 PM UTC (_To get this story in your inbox, subscribe to the TIME CO2 Leadership Report newsletter_ [_here_](https://www.time.com/co2-newsletter)_._) Figuring out how to finance the energy transition is a massive conundrum. The International Energy Agency [says](https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050) annual clean energy investment will need to hit $4 trillion by the end of the decade. Jigar Shah can provide a key piece of the puzzle—for the businesses that choose to work with him. As the director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), Shah has the ability to loan companies more than $400 billion collectively to help finance [clean technology](https://time.com/6256132/ford-ev-china-clean-technology/) projects. He told me that he’s seen an uptick in interest from the private sector since he took the job in the early days of the Biden Administration, but nonetheless getting companies to commit remains harder than one might think. “I can’t name a single sector that’s been easy,” he says. “Every one of them is their own kind of impossible.” Shah’s work is important in its own right. His office has the unique ability to single-handedly accelerate the energy transition, giving huge loans to key projects and companies that can help bring critical technologies to market. After the office was first funded in 2007, for example, it made a crucial loan to Tesla that helped the company become the superpower that it is today. But Shah’s work also offers a bigger lesson: succeeding in the energy transition will inevitably require businesses to challenge themselves to change ingrained practices. ### More from TIME “There’s a lot of people who just are like, can we do big things again?” says Shah. “And I hope to prove to people that we can do big things again.” **The LPO exists to address** a very particular challenge. It doesn’t give venture capital money, where a large portion of projects would be expected to fail. Instead, it works more like a commercial bank that finances proven ideas that require a lot of capital to scale. The idea is that a loan from the LPO for a new technology will help convince commercial banks that they, too, can safely lend for such projects. For that reason, the [Inflation Reduction Act](https://time.com/6204582/inflation-reduction-act-climate-change/) significantly increased its ability to write loans to more than $400 billion from the $40 billion it had remaining at the beginning of the Biden presidency. **Read more:** [_Why Investing in Climate Action During a Recession Is a Smart Business Move_](https://time.com/6275245/climate-change-business-recession/) But it’s easier said than done. I caught up with Shah on April 24, in New York City’s Penn Station of all places, as I arrived in the city and he was heading home from a clean energy finance conference. Shah has devoted significant time and resources to getting facetime with private sector leaders and convincing them to do business with his office. It helps that Shah is a trusted voice with a storied career in the private sector and a recognizable role co-hosting a well-known [clean energy podcast](https://www.greentechmedia.com/podcast/the-energy-gang), but the challenge has remained nonetheless. “I wish it got easier and people were like, ‘oh, Jigar. I heard your podcast and I went on your website and filled out a loan application,” he told me. “Never! I’ve got to work with each one of them across the finish line, to put the resources into getting it done. Some of them I had to browbeat. But we’re getting them. Each one.” Working with the LPO also requires businesses to think differently. Shah says that companies will often send their government relations staff to meet with his office—even though these officials don’t typically have the authority to make investment decisions. Just as challenging, many of the managers typically empowered to make big investment decisions resist exploring avenues to finance projects beyond the traditional lenders they’re accustomed to doing business with. “They have been told over and over and over again that doing these kinds of big bold ideas is above your pay grade, don’t dream big,” says Shah. “And we’re finally telling them to dream big.” Shah says the best way to convince companies to engage with the program is to show how it works by simply making loans. Last summer, for example, the LPO made a $504.4 million loan guarantee for the world’s largest hydrogen storage facility to be constructed in Utah. Using hydrogen to store energy—including clean energy—has been proven to work, but it has yet to achieve widespread adoption. The LPO loan guarantee can help show banks it’s worth financing these projects across the country. “The only way to do this is by showing people loan by loan how this occurs,” says Shah. “How the public-private partnership was structured, and what role the city played, and what role the state energy financing institution played, what role the utility played—just kind of lay it out deal by deal.” The obvious lesson for the private sector is that the LPO is open for business. The office has 141 active applications totaling $121.1 billion in value requested. That’s a large sum, but the office still has significant room to do more. But there’s a bigger lesson for companies, too. In this new era of rapid energy and climate transition, we all benefit from thinking about how we might do things differently. ## Transcript I've always been important but it's more important than ever. We're putting the stability and health of the entire Earth system. At-risk day is a reminder that we not have to become what I called stewards of Guardian of the stability of the entire planet. In the climate Science World Johan. Rockstrom is known as a bit of a rock star. He's on the 2023 time 100 list, he has a viral tedtalk, he stars in the Netflix documentary and when people talk about the Practical steps needed to slow climate change, they talk about his work, he's best known as one of the scientist who developed something called the planetary boundaries framework. It's sometimes called the PBS and it's a way for everyone from scientists to politicians, to Business Leaders to evaluate 9 system that regulate Earth as a livable planet, each system, or PB has a boundary that humans can't afford to cross if we want to keep living on Earth. In the latest assessment. Six of the nine boundaries are outside of the safe space D6, our climate by diversity freshwater. Nitrogen phosphorus air, pollutants and chemical overloading depressing news report about climate change from the United Nations, which showed that the planet is warming at a rate that pretty much guarantees things like catastrophic drought, flooding, and species Extinction. So what should we focus on right now? Large Transformations. We need to urgently accomplished to come back with an amount as well, plan the future. I wouldn't plan to boundary is the energy transition soap to phase out, fossil fuels oil, coal and gas, cutting emissions by half every decade of a Nazi World economy by 2050, and the food system transition, it is about feeding Humanity without expanding into the remaining 60%. Land areas that are still intact nature and to produce food, and why is that do not destroy water, continue building carbon and do not, pollute are an old environment around it. Even in the face of these formidable challenges Rostrum is still hopeful. He points to Green shoot signs of Hope like the fact that renewable energy is increasing exponentially. We're seeing you know on average something like 10% of global electricity coming from solar and wind. If we continue on the pace we are today we would have over half 50% of the real Christie coming from wind and solar. Just buy 20, 30, second place, he sees green shoots is in changing ways of food production. Practices that have been around for decades with car to Coffee nature as much as possible to let routing systems and carbon and soil. Biology, be much more than a healthy State. We can Sequester carbon but also have more water holding capacity better routing depth, more resilient crops combine that with eating more healthy food, having diets that are more diverse. Can only give us a better healthy life but also contribute significantly to A Healthy Planet and we manage the planet. The simple answer is yes. We've done it before. In the late 1970s early 1980s, when were destroying the stratospheric, ozone layer with a big ozone hole caused by chemicals that we used for air conditioners on an ant spray and then different shampoo, products, science, identify the hole in the ozone. Layer policy responded with the Montreal protocol of 1987 and industries that stuff. An Innovative and delivered solution that were scalable. That could take us off those Planet damaging chemicals. We can't today conclude that the ozone hole is closing in and we've been able to protect life on Earth. As we know it, we can do the same for climate understands that word, we is complicated. The fact that is powered by fossil fuel energy. Systems is not something that any individual can solve on his or her own, but we can all vote with with outfeed. Keep the dialogue alive engage in in the passwords towards us. share those stories with your friends because if everyone has a buzz, if create a momentum, which is, I think what the world really needs right now, Rocks from teachers for a living. He works with young people, so he knows how worried and angry they are about the state of the planet. In fact, he's been a mentor of sorts to Greta thunberg, a relationship that began as she was found in Friday's for future, my fellow colleagues. Over the years, we've been kind of wondering, where are they use? Because it is in a way unacceptable, what, what we're doing to planet Earth? And I, we are at risk of handing, over a planet to the Next Generation Which is less and less livable before the game. And then all her fellow Fighters and future. Use roles in the 2018 took off in the first Global demonstration to try to Future was held in Berlin who spent the day together as much as we can as supporting use woman. They have such a cute message, listen to science and act accordingly. What? Right? Do we have to hand over less livable world to our children than the planet where we were born on? Waiting for jumpy ride, more droughts and floods, heatwaves challenges, melting ice or we can at least they're all from the most disastrous and unmanageable outcomes. The window for that is still open and we have the solutions. 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