Positive Phil

Positive Phil


Jigar Shah is a Clean Energy Entrepreneur in Creating Market-driven Solutions and Eliminating Market Barriers to address Climate Change.

April 24, 2017

Positive Phil Podcast Welcomes Clean Tech Entrepreneur Jigar Shah “Impact to me means $1 trillion,” says Jigar Shah, president and co-founder of Generate Capital, https://www.generatecapital.com a new specialty finance company that works with project developers and technology manufacturers to finance what he calls “the resource revolution.”

We are excited to announce our special guest on the Positive Phil Show. It gives us great pleasure to announce Jigar Shah to the Positive Phil Podcast. A perfect guest to celebrate our 300th episode.

Jigar Shah, a Clean-Tech Entrepreneur and Visionary Genius.

In the podcast interview, Jigar discusses bits about his past, present, and future.

Click here to listen to Podcast Episode, Episode 300

In creating market-driven solutions and eliminating market barriers to address climate change. Shah has recognized this as “Creating Climate Wealth.”

Check Out Jigar's Book

Shah maintains that Climate Wealth is created when mainstream investors team up with entrepreneurs, corporations, mainstream capital, and governments at scale to solve the big problems of our time while generating compelling financial returns – not concessionary returns.

Past business initiatives

From 2009 to March 2012, Shah served as the first CEO of the Carbon War Room, the global organization founded by Richard Branson and Virgin United that works to harness the power of entrepreneurship to deploy solution technologies at scale.

Prior to his tenure as Carbon War Room CEO, Shah's founded SunEdison in 2003. The company simplified solar as a service through the implementation of the power purchase agreement (PPA) business model. That model changed the status quo, allowing organizations to purchase solar energy services under long-term predictably priced contracts and avoid the significant capital costs of ownership and operation of solar energy systems. The SunEdison business model is a recognized catalyst that helped turn solar PV into a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide.

This Entrepreneur Plans to Save the World, $1 Trillion at a Time

“Impact to me means $1 trillion,” says Jigar Shah, president and co-founder of Generate Capital, a new specialty finance company that works with project developers and technology manufacturers to finance what he calls “the resource revolution.”

First, a little background on Shah. As the founder of solar giant SunEdison, Shah cracked the code and laid the foundation for the explosive growth of not only SunEdison, now worth more than $5.5 billion, but also Elon Musk’s SolarCity and others. His no-money-down, pay-as-you-save business model unlocked the hundreds of billions in secondary financing that has driven the quadrupling of installed U.S. solar capacity in the past five years. Last year, solar and wind together accounted for more than half of new U.S. electrical generating capacity. “Impact means people follow you,” Shah adds.

Since he left SunEdison five years ago, Shah has worked through outfits such as Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room, where he was founding CEO, to build the business case for scaling up other clean-tech industries.

At SunEdison, Shah helped introduce the 20-year power purchase agreements that bring together customers, investors, clean-tech manufacturers and government regulators with terms they can all understand. SunEdison would install and service the equipment, ensure it performed as expected and deliver reliable, long-term dividends to investors.

Generate Capital, launched last year by Shah and co-founders Scott Jacobs and Matan Friedman, aims to demonstrate the investment opportunities in other proven approaches in renewable energy, energy storage and energy efficiency. The firm already has north of $100 million to begin underwriting clean-tech projects. Though some impact-driven family offices are on board, Shah is seeking mainstream investor capital.

Shah and his team have already identified nearly $1 billion wort