JIGAR SHAHCEO, Jigar Shah Consulting
ENERGY IN MY OWN WORDS. Energy affects everything. Water, transportation, cost of business, heating, cooling, warmth, communication, food and more.
Think about eating a piece of lettuce. Probably something a person might never think about. While you gain energy from that food source, it took a lot of wasted energy to arrive to you.
It was watered and grown in the field. It was harvested, and transported by field tractor, packaged in a plant, trucked to a store, stocked in a lighted refrigerated case, put in a grocery bag (made at a paper plant), then transported back to your home – often by automobile.
The transportation cost of lettuce in New York that was grown in California is 70% of the total. If that same lettuce were grown in a hydroponic garden near New York, transportation cost would be 30% of the total.
The same can be said of energy transported over power lines to a building versus solar panels on the roof of that building.
Energy has to become massively local. Energy affects literally everything. To me, nothing is more important.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISIONS WE CAN MAKE MOVING FORWARD? Energy and infrastructure are important. For that we need a plan, not just any plan, one that ensures that we reduce oil prices and control natural gas price volatility – the goal is sufficient energy with much less environmental destruction.
WHERE ARE GREAT IDEAS COMING FROM? Great ideas come from everywhere large corporates and small entrepreneurs. But it is only the small entrepreneur that is willing to shake up the status quo and disrupt the current system with their great ideas.
WHAT IS OUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE MOVING FORWARD? We have invested billions of dollars into innovation since the 1970s into solutions to our current problems. We need to keep investing in innovation, but refocus our effort on to deployment.
HOW DO WE ENSURE GROWTH AND INNOVATION? Deploying the thousands of solutions that we have invested since the 1970s represents the largest wealth creation opportunity on the planet.
To learn more about Jigar Shah or to buy his new book, Creating Climate Wealth, click here.