Tripti Joshi (Editor)

Jigar Shah

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Citizenship
  
USA

Spouse(s)
  
Khushali Shah

Name
  
Jigar Shah


Jigar Shah httpsassetsentrepreneurcomstatic1423866029

Full Name
  
Jigar Hasmukh Shah

Born
  
August 30, 1974 (age 49) (
1974-08-30
)
Modasa, India

Occupation
  
Clean energy entrepreneur

Known for
  
Founder, SunEdisonCEO, Carbon War Room

Alma mater
  
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

1 billion reasons to change our approach to energy access jigar shah at tedxnjit


Jigar Shah (born August 30, 1974) is a clean energy entrepreneur in creating market-driven solutions and eliminating market barriers to address climate change. Shah has recognized this as “Creating Climate Wealth.”

Contents

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.

Jigar shah talks about solar energy july 10 2015


Current business initiatives

Shah is the co-founder and President of Generate Capital. Shah is author of Creating Climate Wealth: Unlocking the Impact Economy, 2013 Icosa Publishing. The book talks about the prominent role of business model innovation, more than new technology, in attracting mainstream capital and unlocking transformational change. In the book, the author pictures reaching our 2020 climate change goals as means to create the next economy with the equivalent of 100,000 companies worldwide, each generating $100 million in sales. Shah argues that, while new technical innovation is valuable, deployment of existing technologies are the key to reaching our near-term climate targets.

Shah serves as a board member of the Carbon War Room, a global organization he previously served as CEO.

Shah has also become an outspoken advocate to end all energy subsidies, including those for renewable energy, to "create a level playing field."

In 2013, Jigar served as a mentor for Unreasonable at Sea, a technology business accelerator for social entrepreneurs seeking to scale their ventures in international markets. Founded by Unreasonable Group, Semester at Sea, and Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. Shah writes for Unreasonable Group’s venture UNREASONABLE.is, a hub for social entrepreneurs.

The Energy Gang

Shah is currently co-host of The Energy Gang, a podcast dedicated to exploring the technological, political and market forces driving energy and environmental issues. On a recent episode, Shah introduced the Jigar Shah Rule - "Countries should not have stupid policy". As noted by co-host Stephen Lacy, the new ruling is pulled directly from the Jigar Shah Playbook, which suggests you must have competitive options such as volumetric reductions and feed-in tariffs, and the way these were designed seven to eight years ago do not work.

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 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.

Shah previously worked in strategy for BP Solar and as a contractor for the Department of Energy on alternative vehicles and fuel cell programs.

Early life

Born in India, Shah moved to the United States with his family when he was one year old. Shah moved to Sterling, Illinois when he was eight years old.

Education

Shah holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and an MBA from the University of Maryland.

References

Jigar Shah Wikipedia