Principal
Ramboll Environ
Joseph Nicolette serves as Ramboll ENVIRON’s Global Ecosystem Services Director. He has over 30 years of experience in the environmental consulting field with a focus on the Oil & Gas Industry. He provides strategic advice and oversight for projects to help balance the risks, benefits and tradeoffs associated with competing alternatives [e.g., oil spill response, decommissioning actions, remedial cleanup, and natural resource damage assessment compensation).
Joseph is internationally recognized for his contributions in developing the NEBA approach. The approach incorporates ecosystem service valuation to support environmental decision-making strategies that provide the greatest net environmental benefit to the public while managing site risks and costs. He has recently used NEBA to develop decommissioning strategies for offshore subsea structures in the North Sea and Australia. He co-authored the first formalized NEBA framework recognized by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the USEPA Science Advisory Board, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. His experience includes the use of natural resource economic valuation and risk models for quantifying the benefits and/or impacts to ecological and human use services associated with actions that affect the environment.
Joe has also contributed to multiple environmental assessments associated with oil releases from the Exxon Valdez up through and including the Deepwater Horizon Incident. He pioneered the use of service-to-service approaches (e.g., habitat equivalency analysis – HEA) before these approaches were codified into oil pollution act regulations in the U.S. and in the European Environmental Liabilities Directive (ELD).
