Webinar: How the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office Hopes to Transform the Energy Sector
The invasion of Ukraine and the accompanying debate over restricting Russian oil and natural gas exports highlights the importance of energy security. The United States and other countries cannot afford to rely on unstable and potentially hostile sources for their energy supply and other essential products. Our economic and national security depends on our ability to promote homegrown ingenuity to produce and use the nation’s vast resource wealth while minimizing the environmental impact and reducing emissions.
In this month’s ConservAmerica webinar, ConservAmerica President Jeff Kupfer talks with two people at the forefront of the energy transition – Jigar Shah, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, and Rob Hanson, CEO of Monolith.
Under Director Shah’s leadership, the DOE loan office has championed large domestic energy infrastructure projects, providing debt financing for commercially deployable projects. With over $40 billion in loan authority and a broad mandate to provide guarantees and loans across multiple energy sectors, the DOE loan program has become a centerpiece of the Biden administration’s efforts to transition the economy to a low-carbon future.
One company to receive a recent conditional loan commitment from DOE is Monolith, which is building a clean hydrogen and industrial decarbonization project in Nebraska. The project uses advanced technology to generate hydrogen without releasing carbon dioxide emissions and is the first commercial unit in Nebraska to produce hydrogen and carbon black, commonly used in tires, hoses, and other rubber products. Monolith also converts hydrogen into ammonia for fertilizer.
Monolith is just one example of DOE’s investment in innovation and American ingenuity by providing access to debt capital, flexible financing, and energy sector expertise.
Watch the webinar here.
Speakers:
Jigar Shah was most recently co-founder and President at Generate Capital, where he focused on helping entrepreneurs accelerate decarbonization solutions through the use of low-cost infrastructure-as-a service financing. Prior to Generate Capital, Shah founded SunEdison, a company that pioneered “pay as you save” solar financing. After SunEdison, Shah served as the founding CEO of the Carbon War Room, a global non-profit founded by Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Unite to help entrepreneurs address climate change. Originally from Illinois, Shah holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois-UC and an MBA from the University of Maryland College Park.
Rob Hanson is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Monolith, where he leads the development of next-generation technology for producing low cost, low emission hydrogen and carbon black, an important raw material used in the manufacture of rubber and plastic. Prior to Monolith, Hanson served as the global director of product management for AREVA Solar, the solar division of the world’s largest nuclear company. He has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford, and has been a guest lecturer at Stanford, UNL, Foothill College and the University of Saskatchewan on topics ranging from thermodynamics to entrepreneurship.
Jeff Kupfer is the president of ConservAmerica.
From left to right: Jigar Shah, Rob Hanson, and Jeff Kupfer.