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

<p><strong>On a podcast in 2020, Jigar called the Department of Energy&#39;s Loan Programs Office &quot;irredeemable&quot; 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.</strong></p><p><br></p><p>The chair of his board at Generate Capital didn&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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.</p><p><br></p><p>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&#39;s underwriting.</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode:</p><ul><li>Day 1: headquarters closed for Covid, and nobody at the Department of Energy knew he was starting</li><li>The ethics fight over his solar portfolio: &quot;I could be a slumlord, but you won&#39;t let me own solar projects&quot;</li><li>&quot;What is a Jigar Shah?&quot; — the question Chris asked his headhunter before taking the call</li><li>He called 300 CEOs asking them to apply for a loan. 7 said yes.</li><li>The Covid backyard parties in Bethesda where Congress learned that $1 billion of loan authority costs the Treasury only about $10 million</li><li>&quot;I was not leaving 2021 without a deal&quot;</li><li>How Jamie got journalists to stop defining the office by its scandal, one breadcrumb at a time</li><p><br></p></ul><p><strong>Links: </strong></p><p>Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigar</p><p><br></p><p>S2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/report-illusion-of-crowds</p><p><br></p><p>Octopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas</p><p><br></p><p>Our merch store: https://energy-empire.bonfire.com/collection/all-products</p>