In 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, ushering in, by some estimates, nearly half a trillion dollars of investment in green energy and manufacturing. But what will happen to this huge investment as Donald Trump enters office?Jigar Shah is one of the best people to answer this question. As the director of the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy, he has spent his career finding new ways to finance green infrastructure. And he’s more optimistic than you might expect about the road ahead.In this conversation, guest host Robinson Meyer, a contributing writer for New York Times Opinion and the founding executive editor of Heatmap News, asks Shah for a progress check on decarbonization. They discuss what has changed about the economics and financing of clean energy; what has worked well in the green energy transition, as well as the trade-offs it has entailed; and what may or may not change as Trump enters office.Book Recommendations:Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas TalebWhat If We Get It Right? by Ayana Elizabeth JohnsonRomney by McKay CoppinsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu [Who]. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Full Episode
Hey, it is Ezra. So I'm taking a bit of time off this month, and we're going to have a few friends of the show on to host guest episodes. Today's host is Robinson Meyer. Rob is a contributing writer for New York Times Opinion and the founding executive editor of HeatMap News, which is the go-to source for reporting on the decarbonization rollout. I'll let him take it from here.
From New York Times Opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show.
Two years ago, Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate law in U.S. history. Its goal was to revitalize manufacturing jobs and make U.S. industry competitive with China. And by one measure, there's been nearly half a trillion dollars in investment in green energy and manufacturing since the law was passed.
But then Democrats lost the election, and the future of decarbonization is far more uncertain. So where does the clean energy industry go from here? Jigar Shah is one of the best people positioned to answer that question. He spent years working in the private sector, leading companies that invented new ways of financing green infrastructure.
And he's now the director of the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy. You're going to be hearing a lot about the Loan Programs Office, or LPO, in this episode. The LPO is supposed to help fund renewable energy projects that private sector lenders find too risky or meager to invest in.
Its experts are supposed to identify promising new clean tech and turn it into something that can scale up, something you can actually buy and use every day. And because of the Inflation Reduction Act, its lending authority grew from $40 billion a few years ago to over $400 billion today.
Ezra has talked a lot on this show about what it takes for the government to help America build abundance, to build new power plants, new power lines, new housing. And I think the Biden administration got closest to that aspiration through the team Jigar Shah leads. So I wanted to talk to Jigar about what lessons he's learned from the Biden administration's economic experiment. What worked?
What are the trade-offs the LPO made? How does Jigar think about turning policy into products? And since this experiment is not over, where does clean energy go in a second Trump era? As always, you can email the show at EzraKleinShow at NYTimes.com. Jigar Shah, welcome to the show. Oh my goodness. It's so great to be here. So I want to start here.
Before we get into policy, Donald Trump has won the election. How screwed is the clean energy industry?
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