Being Right Isn't Enough: Jigar Shah on What Clean Energy Should Learn from Big Wins in Virginia and California
“We didn’t just focus on being right. We focused on winning.” Jigar Shah reflects on why the clean energy industry needs to invest in political power like it invests in technology.
Jigar Shah at Climate Week in New York in September 2026.
When I left DOE’s Loan Programs Office in early 2025, I kept coming back to two questions: How does our industry sustain historic levels of deployment in the face of federal opposition? And can we build the political power to win despite that opposition?
Last week, I got a glimpse of the answer.
In Virginia, Governor Abigail Spanberger released one of the most comprehensive data center frameworks in the country. It tackles the 800-pound gorilla head-on: data centers should pay the costs they create, meet stronger environmental standards, reduce reliance on diesel and gas, and have a clearer path to bring clean power and flexibility to the grid.
In California, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 905 and SB 913. They won’t entirely solve California’s affordability crisis. But they are important steps: use the grid we’ve already paid for more efficiently, and give customer-owned batteries, EVs, and other distributed resources a better chance to compete with expensive traditional infrastructure.
But the bigger lesson from California is political. For too long, the clean energy industry has assumed that having the better idea—and friends in office—was enough. It isn’t.
Josh Becker carried SB 905, with Henry Stern, Ben Allen, Jacqui Irwin, Cottie Petrie-Norris and others helping move the broader affordability agenda. Siva Gunda and David Hochschild at the CEC also deserve enormous credit for consistently pushing California toward smarter use of the grid we already have.
What was different this time? The political capacity surrounding those policymakers. Deploy Action’s Phil Ting brought more than a decade of legislative experience. TURN brought ratepayer credibility. My longtime DOE colleague Karen Skelton, along with Liz Fenton, brought the kind of political judgment that comes from years of getting difficult things done.
We didn’t just focus on being right. We focused on winning.
This is a small win and a first step. But it shows what is possible when our industry invests in political execution with the same seriousness that it invests in technology and policy.
These wins hold the playbook. Lets run it again.
– Jigar Shah, Founding Advisory Chair at Deploy Action