Clean-Power Pioneer Jigar Shah Appointed to Senior Position at U.S. Department of Energy
- As Director of the Loan Programs Office, the Indian American will help the agency to build the energy economy back better.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has appointed Jigar Shah as Director of the Loan Programs Office, which oversees DOE’s more than $40 billion in loan authority across manufacturing, innovative finance, and tribal energy projects. Also appointed is Karen Skelton, who will serve as a senior advisor to Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. DOE says the new senior leadership appointees including Shah “will help the agency deliver on the Biden Administration’s bold climate agenda to create an equitable clean energy future for the American people.”
“I am so excited to join the Biden-Harris Administration,” Shah tweeted on March 3. “Secretary Granholm has been a fierce advocate for job creation through decarbonization and I look forward to helping the Federal Government be an safe and inviting place for innovation to be deployed at scale.”
“DOE is thrilled to bring on these dynamic leaders, who understand the urgency of the climate crisis and will help us seize opportunities to deploy the clean energy technologies of the future,” said DOE Chief of Staff Tarak Shah. “Jigar and Karen both know how to implement the kind of transformative policies we need to build our energy economy back better, while creating millions of good-paying union jobs and delivering benefits to the hardest-hit communities.”
Jigar Shah was most recently co-founder and president at Generate Capital, where he focused on helping entrepreneurs accelerate decarbonization solutions through the use of low-cost infrastructure-as-a service financing. Prior to Generate Capital, Shah founded SunEdison, a company that pioneered “pay as you save” solar financing. After SunEdison, Shah 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. Originally from Illinois, Shah holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois-UC and an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland College Park.
Earlier in January, President Joe Biden appointed Tarak Shah as Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Energy becoming the first person of color, first Indian-American, and first openly LGBTQ person to serve in that position at DOE.Additional appointees include Tanya Das, Chief of Staff, Office of Science; Narayan Subramanian, legal advisor, Office of General Counsel; and Shuchi Talati, Chief of Staff, Office of Fossil Energy.