Ep 76: Jigar Shah, President & Co-Founder at Generate Capital

Jigar was the founder and CEO of SunEdison (NASDAQ: SUNE, TERP), where he pioneered “no money down solar” and unlocked a multi-billion-dollar solar market, creating the largest solar services company worldwide. He is the author of Creating Climate Wealth: Unlocking the Impact Economy. After SunEdison, Jigar served as the founding CEO of the Carbon War Room, a global non-profit founded by Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Unite to help entrepreneurs address climate change. Generate Capital, the Carbon War Room and SunEdison all follow from Jigar’s vision that business model innovation will unlock the largest wealth creation opportunity – resource efficiency. Jigar is committed to helping entrepreneurs and large companies alike implement resource efficiency solutions using “pay as you save” project finance models. Jigar holds an MBA from The University of Maryland and BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He sits on the boards of sPower and the Rocky Mountain Institute. Jigar lives in New York City and is trying to find the perfect cocktail.

In today’s episode, we cover:

Overview of Generate Capital
'Generate’s business model and approach
Industries and solution types they are interested in
Example project
Jigar’s backround and experiences leading up to Generate
How Generate measures success beyond returns
How Jigar thinks about the nature of the climate problem
The role of the new blood coming into the space
Capital types and capital gaps
Capitalism, GDP growth, and climate change
Where economists get it wrong
How optimistic is Jigar for the future?
The most effective ways to address this issue
How Jigar would allocate $100B to maximize its impact on the problem
How you and I can help

Links to topics discussed in this episode:

Generate Capital: https://generatecapital.com/
McKinsey’s resource revolution paper: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/resource-revolution
Scott Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobsscott/
Matan Friedman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matanfriedman/
WeDriveU: https://www.wedriveu.com/
SunEdison: http://www.sunedison.com/
NEXTracker: https://www.nextracker.com/
Greenpeace: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/
Breakthrough Energy Ventures: https://www.b-t.energy/ventures/
Carbon War Room: https://rmi.org/carbon-war-room/
Sunil Paul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilpaul/
International Energy Agency: https://www.iea.org/
Craig Venter: https://www.jcvi.org/about/jventer

You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant