Where in the world is Jigar Shah?

After a two-month break following dismissal from his position as director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, Shah can soon be found behind a microphone with a podcaster’s hat on.

For most people in the U.S. solar industry, Jigar Shah needs no introduction. So when his role at the Loan Programs Office (LPO) ended with the change in administration, many were left wondering, what’s next for this industry icon?

Shah immersed himself in the clean energy industry when, in 2003, he founded SunEdison, a company that launched the “solar as a service” model. As CEO, Shah and SunEdison moved the needle on solar finance.

Shah was co-founder and president of Generate Capital, a finance company specializing in renewable energy, technology, finance and sustainability sectors. He was also the CEO of The Carbon War Room, a non-profit organization with a mission that promoted low carbon and no-carbon innovations in business systems.

For the past four years, he served as director of the Department of Energy’s LPO where he oversaw more than $2 billion in government loans with the goal of bringing state-of-the-art energy innovation to market. During his tenure, the LPO made 55 conditional commitments total approximately $109 billion and he closed 25 deals totally about $61 billion in loans and loan guarantees.

Not surprisingly, Shah was recently named to Time Magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People of 2024.

After his position was eliminated at the LPO, Shah switched hats and became a podcaster, joining a new weekly podcast Open Circuit with Katherine Hamilton and Stephen Lacey. Hamilton and Lacey are former co-hosts of The Energy Gang podcast.

Hamilton is a strategist and principal at 38 North Solutions, who has crafted influential clean energy policy at the state and federal level. Lacey is co-founder of Latitude Media and an energy journalist who covered the sector for nearly two decades.

“When we started our original podcast, we were considered to be in the ‘alternative energy’ industry,” Shah said. “Since then, there’s been a tremendous paradigm shift, and we’re now the dominant energy industry, but we are not necessarily acting or feeling dominant. That disconnect creates so much to discuss.”

The podcast debuts on Feb. 14 just as the clean energy industry has become an economic driver while also facing local, regional and international challenges. The three plan to use their first-hand experience in discussing building, financing and analyzing clean energy solutions.

“Abrupt political change, rapid load growth, and accelerating climate impacts are raising the stakes of the transition,”  Lacey said. “We’re launching this show to give people a deep understanding of how these forces may play out in the energy sector – with the people who’ve been at the front lines of the transition for decades.”