VX Excerpt: Jigar Shah on the Climate Tech Recalibration — Risk, Resilience & Bargain Hunting

Originally published June 27, 2025 by Latitude Media, produced by Open Circuit, co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Katherine Hamilton, and Jigar Shah. Open Circuit brings together three industry veterans to explain the forces accelerating the energy transition – from technological leaps and supply chain shifts, to market upheavals and policy breakthroughs.

As clean energy investment slows and startup valuations fall, seasoned investors are repositioning — not retreating. VX News excerpts the latest episode of Open Circuit by Latitude Media, focusing on the contributions of climate finance veteran Jigar Shah, as he describes how a market once bloated by hype is now ripe with more disciplined opportunity. Jigar Shah served as Director of the Loan Programs Office (LPO) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) from March 2021 to January 2025. Amid policy uncertainty and economic turbulence, Shah argues that infrastructure-scale capital is finally in play…but only for those who understand how to bridge risk with reality.

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The first half of 2025 brought a 19% decline in climate tech investment, according to Sightline Climate. For many, that signals a downturn. But for Jigar Shah, Co-Managing Partner at Multiplier and former director of the DOE’s Loan Programs Office, it’s a long-awaited course correction, and a generational opportunity.

“At least from where I sit, I’ve never seen more opportunity,” says Shah. “You can now buy into the best companies at a discount — companies that were completely inaccessible just two years ago.”

He calls it a "flight to quality" moment, where investors who had been priced out are now snapping up undervalued assets and companies with proven fundamentals. The shakeout has made it easier to see who’s built durable, policy-resilient models — and who was riding the wave of inflated 2020–2022 valuations.

“Most of these investors raised funds in 2019 or 2020, and now they’ve got to return capital to their LPs by 2026,” Shah explains…“That means you’re not just investing — you’re asking, who’s going to buy this company in the next 18 months?”

This exit focus has revealed deep cracks in the climate investment pipeline, especially for first-of-a-kind (FOAK) projects — those that need $50–$100 million to scale but aren’t mature enough for traditional infrastructure investors. Shah doesn’t mince words on that gap:

“You missed your window,” he says bluntly. “No one’s writing checks for high-risk, low-return projects anymore — especially when they don’t see a clear path to getting bought out.”

In this tighter environment, Shah and co-founder Jonathan Silver launched Multiplier to do something different: restructure companies stuck in the “missing middle” through full recapitalizations — buying out early-stage investors, injecting fresh capital, and resetting executive incentives.

“Founders think they still own their cap table,” Shah quips. “We tell them, ‘No, you’re getting a new vesting schedule and a second chance to earn your equity — now let’s go build a real company.’”

While some climate startups still rely on green premiums, Shah is more focused on companies that deliver immediate cost savings to customers, particularly in energy efficiency, distributed energy, and DERs.

“The sexy stuff isn’t where the money is,” he says. “It’s the hard, boring stuff — cutting customer bills, modernizing the grid, delivering results — that’s what scales.”

He points to a broader transformation: climate tech isn’t a niche anymore. It’s central to national energy strategy, manufacturing, and economic growth — especially with AI and data centers driving record grid demand.

“We're not alternative anymore. We’re mainstream,” Shah says. “You’ve got utility execs hiring heads of grid modernization and asking how to get ahead of this wave. That didn’t happen five years ago.”

Despite political volatility — from IRA rollback threats to tariff hikes — Shah insists the climate opportunity remains massive for those who are patient and pragmatic.

“This is a 10-year cycle…If you zoom out from the noise, we’re still in the middle of the most important industrial reshuffling of our lifetimes.” - Jigar Shah, former director of the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office (LPO).