Axios Pro Event: Climate Deals

On Tuesday, September 27, Axios Pro climate deals reporter Alan Neuhauser hosted a one-on-one conversation with U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office director Jigar Shah on long-term capital formation in climate tech and the role his office now plays in it.

Jigar Shah explained how the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act will impact the growth and scaling of various technologies in the energy sector in different ways and why he’s been vocal about the role of nuclear energy technology in the energy transition.

• On how Inflation Reduction Act incentives impact earlier-stage energy sectors: “But then there are other sectors where they haven’t seen a deal yet, so they don’t know the answer. When you ask them, ‘Hey, are these five additional programs from the Inflation Reduction Act enough for you to allocate $100b to cross the bridge to bankability for this sector towards full market acceptance?’ They might say, ‘I’ve spent all of 10 seconds thinking about it, so I don’t know.’”
• On creating a plan for nuclear energy industry growth: “When you think about what it requires in the totality of the complexity of the energy transition, it requires all of these tools in the toolbox. And so part of the reason I’ve been so vocal on nuclear is it is the technology that frankly is the weakest around the conversation that we’re having. There’s a lot of we’re pro-nuclear, we’re anti-nuclear. But the question becomes, where is the 47 page plan that says, here’s exactly how you restart the nuclear industry? It doesn’t really exist.”