Prof. Dato' Ir. Dr. A.Bakar Jaafar, PEng, FIEM, FASc

Prof. Dato’ Ir. Dr. A.Bakar Jaafar serves as Chairman of AGV Group. He brings decades of experience across environmental governance, climate policy, engineering, renewable energy and sustainable development.

Since 2013, he has served as a Research Fellow and Founding Director of the UTM Ocean Thermal Energy Centre, as well as a Professor at the UTM Faculty of Artificial Intelligence. He is currently a leading proponent of renewable energy development in Malaysia, particularly in ocean thermal energy and the generation and production of green hydrogen.

He previously served as Chairman of the Malaysian Green Technology and Climate Change Corporation (“MGTC”) from 4 October 2019 to 31 May 2022.

Prior to that, he served the Government of Malaysia in various capacities from 1973. His career included appointments as a Factories and Machinery Inspector from 1973 to 1974 and Staff Engineer at the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Industrial Environmental Research Laboratory from 1975 to 1976.

Between 1976 and 1984, he served as Principal Assistant Director for Water Quality within the Environment Division of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment. He subsequently served at the Economic Planning Unit in the Prime Minister’s Department from 1984 to 1985.

He later held several senior leadership positions within Malaysia’s Department of Environment (“DOE”), including Director of Operations from 1985 to 1986, Deputy Director-General for Planning from 1987 to 1989 and Director-General from 1990 to 1995.
Following his retirement from public service, he continued to represent the Government of Malaysia as an elected member of the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS”). He served for three consecutive terms from 1997 to 2002, 2002 to 2007 and 2007 to 2012 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.