Throughout his career, Jigar Shah has been a pioneer at the intersection of climate and business. From founding SunEdison—the leading solar company that established $0-down solar, which Shah sold in 2013—to authoring “Creating Climate Wealth: Unlocking the Impact Economy” to starting Generate Capital—a “one-stop shop for the Infrastructure Revolution”—Shah is an expert in harnessing market forces to power climate initiatives.
This month, Shah joined Greentown Labs to share his story as a founder and how he sees the industry’s progress. His conversation with Greentown CEO Emily Reichert, part of our Founder Speaker Series, began with a look back at SunEdison’s origin story and why that company was able to succeed when so many had failed before.
“There was so much appetite for wind power and solar power, but I was finding it was always someone’s second priority,” Shah said. “You want to buy a solar system, but then your kid needs to go to summer camp, the car needs to be replaced, the tractor breaks down. Whatever it is that happens in people’s lives came first, and the purchase of renewable energy came second. There really had to be a way to break that cycle.”
Shah drafted SunEdison’s business plan as part of his MBA program, but said the industry wasn’t ready for his model yet. When he started SunEdison years later, Shah said SunEdison benefitted from others who had pushed solar earlier on, familiarizing the company’s prospective customers with the technology and its benefits. SunEdison built on this progress, and added its own ingredient: “What we brought in was a way for the CFO to say yes,” Shah explained, referencing SunEdison’s solar-as-a-service model, which allowed for the customer to put in less upfront investment and capital.
More recently, Shah co-founded Generate Capital—an investment firm focused on building, owning, operating, and financing sustainable infrastructure projects as diverse as hydrogen vehicles, microgrids, and precision agriculture. In pursuit of projects that are decentralized, decarbonized, digitized, and democratized, Generate “offers proof, not promise, that sustainability pays,” according to the company.
“We’re investing $5-7 trillion a year into infrastructure, globally—new roads, new bridges, new ships—and we need to shift that investment from bad to good, from carbon-polluting to non-carbon-polluting,” he said. “And that requires infrastructure investors.”
As a serial entrepreneur, Shah reflected on how he had to put his own resources into getting SunEdison off the ground—a story that rings true for many founders. His path shows a major roadblock for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the solar space that must be overcome.
“The vast majority of people who started companies had money by which to start those companies,” Shah recalled. “I was very lucky that I had a house, and a mortgage, and a line of credit, otherwise I couldn’t have started SunEdison. So by definition, because that’s how entrepreneurship works in solar, it was people who had that equity that could do it. And because of redlining, and all sorts of other policies from the 1940s on, a lot of people of color don’t have those kinds of assets, and so they weren’t allowed to be entrepreneurial in our space.”
When asked about the solar market in the context of the current financial crisis, Shah offered up reasons why he believes the industry is well positioned to ride it out.
“[Many politicians] see us as an economic engine—we are the one place where you have an amazing bright spot,” he said. “People want what we have to sell. Utility companies are continuing to sign contracts, corporate PPAs continue to get signed, community solar projects continue to get built.”
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and conciseness. See below for a full recording of the discussion!
Visit our website for recaps on previous Founder Speaker Series panels and other events.