Who Are We?
Nigel Howard
Nigel has held influential positions in the US, UK and Australia and consults to a wide range of companies, governments and NGO’s.
In Australia, Nigel founded the Edge Environment consultancy (Now Edge Impact) and served as its Board Chair and Managing Director/CEO until 2011. Nigel managed the Building Products Life Cycle Inventory project to establish a national consensus methodology and database of consistent LCA data for the building materials and products industries. For the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia, he developed the LCA based Materials Calculator and the Materials and Resources credits for the Infrastructure Sustainability IS rating tool.
Nigel originates from the UK, where as Director of the Centre for Sustainable Construction, he completed the BRE environmental profiles methodology resulting from a 10 year long consultation with 24 building product sectors. From this basis he developed the UK Green Guides to Specification for Commercial buildings and Homes. He was responsible for the BREEAM98 building rating tools and pioneered the launch of ECOHomes. These rating tools have been copied and imitated globally (including for Green Star and NABERS in Australia). In prior roles he worked for Davis Langdon Consultants, for the Building Research Energy Conservation Support Unit, British Gas and the Greater London Council’s Scientific Branch.
Before coming to Australia Nigel was Vice President for the US Green Building Council, responsible for developing, implementing and establishing the suite of LEED building environmental rating systems from a single Commercial Buildings pilot. These included LEED for New Construction, LEED Core and Shell, LEED for Existing Buildings, LEED Homes, LEED for Neighbourhood Developments. He was also responsible for establishing the influential LEED Accredited Professional training programs and credentials. He led a trade mission to China for USGBC member company executives in 2005.
He has contributed internationally to IEA Annex 31 and ISO TC39 committees and was a founder member of the World Green Building Council promoting the establishment of Green Building Councils in many countries including Australia. He was also a founder member and past Vice President of iiSBE collaborating internationally on the technical development of building rating tools.
Nigel is a former President of the Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society and presided over the development and launch of the AusLCI methodology developed in collaboration with CSIRO. Nigel founded the LCA Round Table LinkedIn Group to try to restore the scientific integrity of Life Cycle Assessment. The content of the page illustrates the many major flaws in LCA and the databases that LCA relies on, including broken thermodynamic fundamentals, broken physical reality, breached measurement boundaries etc. and proposes solutions, including offering a draft single consistent, scientifically robust “Grail” methodology for anyone or any institution to use or adapt from. Regrettably vested interests have prevailed in perpetuating a free-for-all approach to LCA within which every product can claim to be the winner – LCA has now degenerated into sophisticated Greenwash.
Nigel has acted as visiting lecturer to a number of universities including Oxford and Cambridge (UK); Stanford (US); USyd & UNSW (Australia) and presented and keynoted a large number of conferences internationally.
