About Us
Zero-Carbon Solutions was founded by Niels Bjergstrom, MSc/PhD (Dipl. Ing.), MACM, DEA, in 2006.
Over a number of years Niels gradually realised the urgency of preparing for the new conditions inevitably brought about by accelerating climate change, whether anthropogenic or not, and after a career in mechanical and IT design and engineering spanning more than four decades and covering all business levels from sweeping the floor to managing director (two tasks he often successfully combined), considered how best to apply his capabilities to this important task.
In realisation of the poor standard of the UK building stock and practices he decided to try to push for improvements in this area, not just as an evangelist but practically by helping design and build to ultra-low energy standards. The state of the art in this field is set by German and Scandinavian building regulations, fiscal/political remedies and the passivehouse standard. The UK could do a lot worse than adopting these standards and some of the national policies instead of reinventing the wheel. You cannot make progress without standing on the shoulders of those who went before you!
In preparation to setting up Zero-Carbon Solutions, Niels spent almost two years studying building methods and materials, climatology, reading the German text-books from the PassivHaus Institut and others, studying building engineering and architecture. He also certified as a Domestic Energy Assessor.
Niels was born in Denmark and graduated from Denmark's Technical University as MSc(hons) in 1971, in the field of technical physics. He was awarded a stipend to continue post-graduate studies in solid-state physics and left the university in 1973 at a level corresponding approximately to the UK/US PhD, which did not exist in Denmark at the time. Concurrently he conducted studies at the Copenhagen Business School to a level similar to MBA.
After a short stint in industry Niels founded E-C Tools Ltd, a company designing and manufacturing machinery for the automotive sector, e.g. equipment to handle and dispense (highly hygroscopic) brake fluids, emission testers and other test equipment for garages and vehicle manufacturers. Customers included Castrol in the UK.
Having worked part time at the university computer centre during his studies, and used computer simulations extensively in his research work, Niels had an excellent background in IT, and after selling E-C Tools, he founded E-C DATA A/S in 1979 as an electronics engineering company developing and manufacturing micro-computer solutions. The company developed and produced bespoke computer hardware, modems, routers, operating systems, custom integrated circuits as well as many types of software and total solutions. Among its customers were IBM, Siemens, Olivetti, Wang and defence organisations. While working in E-C DATA as MD, Niels initiated the development of one of the world's first anti-virus systems in 1986. ECE DATA AB in Falkenberg, Sweden, was established as a daughter company, and the company had production facilities in Denmark and Taiwan.
After selling the company in 1989 Niels set up Computer Security Engineers Ltd to develop and market anti-malware solutions, operating from The Hague in Holland. He moved on board his yacht full time and for the next five years spent most of his time sailing while still playing an active part in anti-malware development and marketing. From 1992 Niels was publishing the CSE Newsletter About Information Security, which in 1996 he turned into Information Security Bulletin, a leading technical journal. Niels is an internationally recognised information security expert, who - besides editing ISB - has organised a series of international information security conferences and served as a consultant to a number of organisations and an innovator in the field.