SunEdison founder Jigar Shah joins Empower Energies board

SunEdison founder Jigar Shah has joined the board of Empower Energies, the solar provider formerly known as Visole Energy.

Shah, who now runs his own company, Jigar Shah Consulting, is also a board member and former chief executive of the Carbon War Room, the global organisation founded by Sir Richard Branson to help entrepreneurs address climate change.

He also recently served as president of Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy, which fought an ultimately fruitless battle against the US government’s moves to impose heavy tariffs on Chinese solar importers.

Len Jornlin, chief executive of Empower Energies, said: "Jigar and I worked together at SunEdison, and I am excited to team with him again as we build Empower Energies by serving the needs of our customers and stakeholders."

After successfully building the firm, Shah sold SunEdison to MEMC in 2009.

David Kay, chairman of the Empower Energies board of directors, said: "By driving global standardisation of the power purchase agreement (PPA) business model, Jigar Shah enabled mainstream capital to flow into the solar industry, and was a key to unlocking proven solar technologies to be deployed worldwide."

Previously, Shah worked on strategy at BP Solar, after working as a contractor for the Department of Energy on vehicles and fuel cell programmes.

He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and an MBA from the University of Maryland and is also author of a forthcoming book: Creating Climate Wealth: Unlocking the Impact Economy.

Shah said: “I am looking forward to leveraging the initial successes of Empower Energies to build a multi-technology platform to accelerate and optimise the deployment of sustainable technologies into industrial companies."

The company announced its name change from Visole earlier this month.