External E&E Links
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The Environment and Energy websites go back a long time. They are
essentially the work of Brian Ellis, an electronics engineer. In the
1970s, he became concerned that the electronics industry was less
"environmentally-friendly" than was commonly believed and he directed
his efforts to improving it, through the Protonique Group of companies
which he founded in 1975, in Lausanne, Switzerland. The turning point came in 1988,
when the Swiss government named him to represent the Confederation on a
United Nations Environment Programme Committee. Since that moment, he has
worked almost full time on environmental matters, on an international scale,
accepting many mandates from the Swiss Government,
UNEP and other governmental and industrial organisations.
The idea of using the Internet to promote the environment came
early in the development of the web technology. Protonique had their
first web site up in 1994, using CompuServe, with the code written
entirely manually in a DOS text editor. This was a simple site.
Realising the potential of WYSIWYG web editing, we bought FrontPage from
Vermeer in 1996, taken over as Microsoft FrontPage 97 a few months later
and, in the same year, we abandoned CompuServe, using the new pair.com
as ISP. We have used FrontPage until 2008, using the 2003 version, but
have now moved onto Expression Web, to allow us to modernise our sites.
Our web site development has gone through a number of stages over the
years from 1995 onwards, but it was only in 2002 that we embarked on the
Environment and Energy Series, initially with one uniquely for Cyprus,
to which country Brian Ellis moved in 1997. This incorporated some ideas
from earlier web sites, including the 1998 Water in Cyprus report.
Since then, a World E&E site, a forum and a wiki have been added along
with other sites.
Brian Ellis no longer has any commercial activities and all the
E&E (and other) web sites are offered pro bono publico.
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