Jigar Shah Wants to Depoliticize Energy

Columbia Energy Exchange · Feb 3, 2026 · 1h 2m

As political support for clean energy has waxed and waned over the past twenty years, so has the government's financial backing. In the 2010s, critics pointed to the failed solar startup Solyndra, which the Department of Energy had backed to the tune of half a billion dollars, as a poster child of wasteful spending. But under President Biden, in addition to major clean energy incentives passed in the Inflation Reduction Act, the DOE's Loan Programs Office borrowing authority grew ten-fold. Now, under a second Trump administration, the tide turned again. The loan office, and clean energy…