Accelerating the Midwest Energy Transition

Join us for a live interview with Jigar Shah, president and co-founder of Generate Capital as we discuss the energy transition and the forces that are collaborating and colliding to create the current rapid adoption of solar, wind and storage in the upper Midwest including: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The adoption of solar is being driven by:

  • Installation cost declines
  • Clean energy legislation like the Future Energy Jobs Act (FEJA) and pursuit of a 100 percent RPS by the Pritzker administration.
  • Utilities sunsetting their fleets of coal and natural gas (and nuclear?) power plants
  • Consumer and stakeholder demands

Some questions we will consider:

  • How does subsidy free solar work?
  • What does it mean to level the playing field for all energy sources?
  • Who are the bellwether cities and states leading the clean energy charge?
  • What’s holding us back from a smoother energy transition?

Illinois and Minnesota have strong distributed generation (DG) and community solar markets with pent up demand by developers to build more projects. And utilities like Xcel, NIPSCO, and Alliant are planning to replace most of their fossil assets with solar, wind and storage by 2050. According to Fitch Resources, there are upwards of 80 gigawatts (100+ billion) of solar projects under development in PJM, MISO and SPP which means jobs and economic growth for the greater good.

See the Fitch report here: https://tinyurl.com/y6lqyb52

About Jigar Shah

Shah is a clean energy entrepreneur, author, and co-host of the Energy Gang podcast. He is known for work to create and advocate for market-driven solutions to climate change and he is the author of the book, “Creating Climate Wealth: Unlocking the Impact Economy” published in 2013. 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.

He was the founder and CEO of SunEdison (NASDAQ: SUNE), where he pioneered “no money down solar” and unlocked a multi-billion-dollar solar market, creating the largest solar services company worldwide. His popular book, Creating Climate Wealth: Unlocking the Impact Economy, talks about the prominent role of business model innovation, more than new technology, in attracting mainstream capital and unlocking transformational change. Shah was born in India, moved to the US at age 1, and then moved to Sterling, Illinois when he was eight years old.

Shah holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana,[13] and an MBA from the University of Maryland.