Jeffrey Beyer

Jeffrey is the founder and Managing Director of Zest Associates, a UAE-based sustainability consultancy focused on business and government strategy, cleantech innovation, and green finance.

He specializes in forming new programs and initiatives to accelerate solutions like hydrogen, energy efficiency, renewable energy and low carbon transport. He also helps highly innovative cleantech companies find investment, joint venture partners and new clients in the Middle East.

Jeffrey has launched innovation programs for utilities like the UK’s National Grid, and multilaterals like the World Bank and International Climate Fund. He has helped establish national Centres of Excellence for renewables and energy efficiency, including the UK Offshore Wind Innovation Hub, National Renewable Energy Catapult and the South African Private Sector Energy Efficiency Program.

He has authored landmark studies on financing a green transition in the Middle East and accelerating the clean hydrogen industry in the UAE, and was instrumental in founding the UK's first cleantech Venture Capital fund as public-private partnership, now capitalized with £100 million. He is a serial entrepreneur, having founded climate consultancies in the UK and the UAE, as well as a cleantech R&D company that uses plants to remediate mercury-contaminated soil, the cleans the plants and turns them into biogas.

He holds undergraduate degrees in Economics and Psychology, and a Masters in Environmental Change & Management from Oxford University.