Jigar Shah's appearance at this week's Green Business Roundtable

Jigar Shah was our guest at this week's Green Business Roundtable, hosted at SEIA's offices in Washington, DC.

Jules Keniry of the National Wildlife Federation took notes and wrote them up in this guest post:
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Three Lessons for US Higher Education from World’s Leading Clean Economy Entrepreneur

Yesterday, the founder of SunEdison, the largest solar services company worldwide, Jigar Shah, discussed his new book, Climate Wealth: Unlockingthe Impact Economy, with members of the Green Business Roundtable. He challenged business and other stakeholders to step up in ways that will “seize hold of the biggest wealth generating opportunity in a generation.”

A “100 by 100” Plan and Higher Education

Through the "100 x 100 Plan,” Shah details in his recent blog post on the Corporate EcoForum, how 100,000 companies can sell $100 million worth of solar, energy efficiency, ground-source heat pumps and other climate change solutions that will create the $10 trillion clean economy needed by 2020 to help prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

When asked how higher education could best contribute to achieving this goal, I thought he might highlight the need for more state or federal R&D investment into clean energy technologies as faculty members from UC-Berkeley and elsewhere often do.

The irony of Exxon ads among the photos of Philippine destruction



I visited the USA Today website to find news about Super Typhoon Haiyan. They had a photo gallery of images of the destruction.  Very graphic and disturbing.   Every fifth click I would get this image:


I hope I am not the only person to see the enormous irony of these ExxonMobil ads mixed in with photos like these:
A man walks among debris of destroyed houses in Tacloban.




A view of the typhoon-ravaged city of Tacloban, Philippines, on Nov. 9.

The fossil fuel industry has blocked meaningful progress on climate change for years.  ExxonMobil has been one of the biggest supporters of deniers and organizations that work against solving the climate crisis.  All the while there is more and more evidence that the most powerful tropical storms--of which Haiyan is now the poster child--are becoming even more powerful.

Irony cubed.