Yes, Biden's Green Future Can Still Happen Under Trump
About this episode
Guest host Robinson Meyer interviews Jigar Shah, director of the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, about whether Biden-era clean-energy investments can survive a second Trump administration. Shah argues the industry found its footing during Trump's first term and will keep growing, because clean technologies are increasingly superior products rather than merely climate instruments. He explains the office's role — a government bank whose loan authority the Inflation Reduction Act expanded tenfold, to more than $400 billion — funding first-of-a-kind projects like battery plants and lithium mines that private lenders deem too risky. They debate the Solyndra lesson, the office's slow disbursement, and whether labor and community requirements slow deployment. Shah concludes entrepreneurs are nonpartisan and unstoppable, and that surging electricity demand makes new clean capacity an economic necessity any administration must meet.