Who Is Jigar Shah? (Part 3): Taking Over the Office He Called "Irredeemable"

On a podcast in 2020, Jigar called the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office "irredeemable" and said it could never be trusted again. A few weeks later, the Biden transition team called, asking him to become the next Director of that exact office. The chair of his board at Generate Capital didn't want him to take the job, so he wrote a memo laying out the conditions that had to change for him to accept, thinking they'd never agree. To his surprise, they accepted all of his demands. A couple of months later, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm appointed him Director of the Loan Programs Office. During his tenure, the office's lending authority would grow from $40 billion to $400 billion, making it what Jigar calls the largest provider of energy credit in the world. To help tell the story of the first two years at LPO, Jigar and Jamie are joined by Chris Creed, who left Goldman Sachs Asset Management, where he co-ran a $75 billion mortgage-backed securities team, to rebuild LPO's underwriting. In this episode: Day 1: headquarters closed for Covid, and nobody at the Department of Energy knew he was starting The ethics fight over his solar portfolio: "I could be a slumlord, but you won't let me own solar projects" "What is a Jigar Shah?" — the question Chris asked his headhunter before taking the call He called 300 CEOs asking them to apply for a loan. 7 said yes. The Covid backyard parties in Bethesda where Congress learned that $1 billion of loan authority costs the Treasury only about $10 million "I was not leaving 2021 without a deal" How Jamie got journalists to stop defining the office by its scandal, one breadcrumb at a time Links: Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigar S2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/report-illusion-of-crowds Octopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas Our merch store: https://energy-empire.bonfire.com/collection/all-products