Green Public Procurement Criteria Research Articles

Directive 2023/1791 EED: A Step Closer to Mandatory Green Public Procurement Criteria Through Sectorial Legislation

The European Union’s Directive 2023/1791 EED is a critical step in the European Union’s trajectory towards climate neutrality by 2050, instituting enforceable Green Public Procurement criteria. This article delves into the Directive’s implementation complexities, scrutinising its potential to navigate the EU energy policy evolution and foster sustainability in public procurement. Notably, Article 7 and Annex IV of the Directive demonstrate a clear shift by mandating high energy efficiency performance standards across various sectors, signifying a move from discretionary to compulsory Green Public Procurement criteria. Despite its robust policy stance, the Directive faces practical impediments, including diverse Member States compliance levels and the need to balance regulatory directives with market dynamics. While the Directive aims to position public authorities at the forefront of sustainable procurement, catalysing market transformation, it walks a delicate line between legislative ambition and actionable enforcement. The variability in economic and technological capacities among Member States could hinder uniform application. By introducing a framework that allows for enforceable, adaptive, and technology-sensitive specifications, the Directive could bridge the gap between policy and practice, optimising its impact on energy consumption and environmental sustainability. However, addressing potential ambiguities in interpretation, the economic burden on public entities, and institutional inertia remains critical for its rigorous and effective implementation. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Directive 2023/1791, situating it within the EU’s broader energy policy framework, and critically evaluates its potential to truly change the Union’s approach to energy efficiency and Green Public Procurement.

Approaches for assessing the public administration activities in the field of ensuring sustainability

Paper has tried to find a balance between the traditional role of public administration (transparency, efficiency, information symmetry and other values of common European administrative space) and the new role since the European Green Deal (2020) and public procurement reform (2014) as a policy tool for promoting green growth. It has been argued that Green Public Governance Efficiency can be assessed according to inputs and outputs. The information can be organised into several categories: Investment in Environmental governance, public institution energy consumption and green public procurement. Some variables can be waged as outputs: sustainable development growth index (SDGI), consumer engagement in green governance and the achievement of Green Public Procurement (GPP) criteria. It is difficult to arrive at conclusions about a need for appropriate instrumental variables. Despite the limitations, these are valuable in light of how Public Administration can contribute to environmental protection and long-term growth.

How Will the Adoption of Mandatory GPP Criteria Change the Game?

With the 2003 Communication on Integrated Product Policy, the European Commission started focusing more on ‘greening’ Member States’ public procurement law, by encouraging the adoption of National Action Plans (NAPs). Subsequently, with the 2008 Communication, green public procurement (GPP) criteria were developed. Since then, the Commission has developed more than 20 standard GPP criteria, which are currently applied voluntarily. Recently, the EU Commission indicated that they are working on mandating GPP criteria and several legislative proposals are foreseeing the setup of mandatory EU GPP criteria for all Member States. Some domestic legislations have already introduced mandatory GPP criteria. In particular, the Italian legislator followed up the Commission’s initiative on NAPs, and adopted mandatory minimum environmental criteria (MECs) for 18 purchasing categories. This article aims to describe and compare the evolution of GPP criteria in the EU and Italy to illustrate and anticipate possible outcomes for the forthcoming mandatory GPP at the EU level. By doing so, the paper emphasises the prominent role played by the Italian Council of State in ensuring the mandatory minimum for environmental criteria in Italian law. Finally, it argues that the Italian approach, which uses the ineffectiveness of the contract as a general and well-established remedy, has proven successful in ensuring the enforcement of MECs. Keywords: GPP criteria; sustainable public procurement; mandatory minimum environmental criteria; Italian public procurement law; ineffectiveness of public contract

Guidelines for outsourcing collective catering services in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region

Abstract Issue Many stakeholders involved in collective catering services (CCS) of schools, hospitals, elderly care homes, and workplaces of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia (ARFVG) have reported some non-compliance with the nutritional, environmental or social standards required by public administrations (PA) procurement contracts (PC), which included the recommendations of the WHO, EU, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of the Environment (MHE). Description of the problem The ARFVG prevention plans have set the goal to overcome the critical issues of the regional CCS which serve over 10% of the population (130,000 meals a day). Between 2019 and 2021, a multidisciplinary group of experts from health services and from the association of 215 regional municipalities developed the guidelines (GL) for outsourcing of CCS. The aim was to support PA in the drafting of PC, evaluation of offers and verification of contractual performance. Reference was made to Dir. 2014/24/EU, EU green public procurement criteria for food, catering services and vending machines, the national lines for CCS of MHE. The GL are characterized by the integration between the tender document models and the 8 qualification areas detailed in: restructuring; supplies; environmental impact and sustainability; production processes; personnel qualification and training; nutritional standards; customer satisfaction; and verification and research of quality. Results Two regional central purchasing bodies have already used the GL to draft the PC for school CCS of 26 municipalities and for the whole hospital CCS of RAFVG. The application of guidelines in PC has introduced homogeneous high level qualification and verification standards for the CCS of the RAFVG. Lessons To ensure the application of food, nutritional, environmental and social policies in CCS, it is essential to activate networks between professionals from different sectors in order to share tools to achieve the common sustainable development goals. Key messages • To integrate food, nutritional, environmental and social regional policies into collective catering services, it is essential to apply systemic tools shared by all Public Administrations. • Central purchasing bodies have the potential to introduce homogeneous and shared high level qualification and verification standards for collective catering services.

Is public procurement fit for reaching sustainability goals? A law and economics approach to green public procurement

Green public procurement is assumed to have a strong steering effect. The recent EU Green Deal contains proposals to amend green public procurement rules from voluntary to mandatory regulation, which has been endorsed by several legal scholars. At the same time, the effectiveness of green public procurement as an environmental policy tool has been studied in economics, where research results present a reserved approach towards green public procurement’s effectiveness. This article examines green public procurement applying a law and economics methodology, with the goal of combining the approaches from different disciplines and finding ways in which environmental objectives can be effectively addressed through procurement regulation. The main conclusions are that the steering effect, costs and potential environmental impact of green public procurement vary in different industries and therefore a sector-specific approach should be adopted in the development of green public procurement regulation. In order to encourage companies to invest and develop their operations in a greener direction, it is important that a large number of contracting authorities use harmonized green public procurement criteria. Further, the effects of green public procurement regulation on competition and emissions from the private consumer market should be monitored and the potential of public procurement to achieve environmental objectives should be explored and compared with other policy options.

Criteria analysis of green public procurement in the Spanish furniture sector

Green Public Procurement (GPP) constitutes a potential policy instrument to reduce the environmental impact of products, services and works, and to create environmental value for society. Further requirements had to be recently incorporated into tenders to boost sustainability in the production and consumption market to favour circular economy. The awarding process used by public institutions while tenders are being evaluated becomes especially relevant in the performance of the final purchased product or service. This paper describes an in-depth analysis performed on the GPP criteria for furniture, which is identified as one of the priority sectors for circular economy. Forty-three tenders from the Spanish furniture sector were content-analysed and the criteria included in them were identified and clustered. The results showed how environmental, technical, social and other considerations are being included in tenders and which weight is granted to them during the awarding process. The results reveal that, although environmental criteria are being progressively introduced, these are still tentatively present (average weight of 6.02%) and the economic aspect is still the most decisive one (73.14%), followed by the technical (18.67%). A high potential was found in the furniture sector regarding innovation, ecolabel integration, public staff training and policy development towards enhancing the market’s circularity.

Relationship between green public procurement criteria and sustainability assessment tools applied to office buildings

Green Public Procurement (GPP) plays an important role in facing the challenge of reducing the environmental impacts from construction sector-related products, services and works, and creating environmental and innovative value for society in favour of a greener and more sustainable economy. The European Commission recently developed GPP criteria for the “office buildings” category. In parallel, Building Sustainability Assessment (BSA) tools help estimate a building's impact on the environment based on a life cycle approach. Many of the aspects and measurable indicators included in BSA tools are clearly related to the criteria covered by GPP. However, other important ones are missing and should be integrated to ensure green procurement initiatives. This study critically reviews the GPP criteria proposed for office buildings and crosschecks them with the sustainability indicators included in three BSA tools to reinforce the GPP framework for the office buildings sector. It provides, on the one hand, an evaluation of the rate of improvement achieved in the tools when applying GPP criteria and, on the other, a proposal for a weighting system for awarding points to the offers in tenders. The results will help contracting authorities to introduce more objectivity into the tendering process and to make informed decisions while evaluating bidders' proposals.

LOCAL FOOD PROCUREMENT TENDENCIES IN LATVIA

The OECD has emphasized that regions need to boost their growth by placing local resources and means in circulation in order to benefit from their competitive advantages. It encourages the search and analysis of those regional key factors that are driving development in the regions. Local authorities can boost their region with the use of territorial capital and the promotion of entrepreneurship. One of the ways how to do this is to buy food from local producers. Giving preference to local suppliers, even if it means spending a little more, can actually benefit a region’s finances. When local governments spend their money on locally owned firms, those firms in turn rely on and generate local supply chains, creating an “economic multiplier” effect. Each additional dollar that circulates locally boosts local economic activity, employment and, ultimately, tax revenue. In Latvia, since 2014, attention has been focused on increasing the consumption of local food. Improvements in regulatory enactments have been made, which stipulate that green public procurement criteria should be used in food procurement, where one of the criteria, the supply distance, directly contributes to this aim by giving preference to the local producers. The research aim is to analyze the data of local government food procurements carried out in Latvia from 2010 to 2018 and to evaluate the share of local suppliers in these procurements. The food procurement winners were divided into four groups: agricultural producers, food processing companies, wholesale companies and retail companies. The study evaluates how each group's share in total food purchases varies over the years, and how procurement volumes vary depending on the winner's belonging to the one of the groups previously defined. Such an analysis shows the proportion of local producers in procurement, but does not fully reflect on the volume of local production, as it is not possible to obtain data on the share of production which producer purchased from others to provide the necessary volumes of food, and there is no data on the origin of products supplied by wholesalers. The following research methods were employed to carry out the present research: analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, the monographic method, statistical analysis and the graphic method.

The Role of Green Public Procurement in the Implementation of Sustainable Development. City of Łódź Case Study

The article concerns the practical use of green public procurement to implement sustainable development. The use of this type of instrument in the investment activity of the city in the years 2007–2017 is presented on the example of the City of Łódź. Documents related to the implementation of public procurement were analyzed. The research was subordinated to the verification of the hypothesis that the implementation of urban investments using green public procurement and ecological criteria is an effective mechanism for the implementation of sustainable development by the territorial self-government. The results confirmed that green public procurement contributes to the improvement of the natural environment and the quality of life of residents in accordance with the concept of sustainable development.

Mapping diffusion of Environmental Product Declarations released by European program operators

In order to facilitate the adoption of green requirements in public procurement, European Commission has developed the Green Public Procurement (GPP) criteria for various typologies of products and services. Almost all GPP criteria require environmental labels as means of proof that the goods or supplies correspond to the required environmental characteristics. Among the labels required, there are type III labels, based on a life cycle assessment study.The aim of this study is to (i) investigate to what extent a specific type III label, called Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), is spread in Europe and (ii) explore whether there is a correspondence between institutional initiatives towards GPP and the market.This study explored the valid EPDs presented on the websites of the European program operators between September and December 2016. The identified EPDs were quantified and classified according to the programme operator, title of the reference Product Category Rule (PCR), country, language and the product based on a classification system developed by the United Nations.In total, 4,888 EPDs were collected mainly released by the Institut Baum und Umwelt e.V. (IBU) and PEP ecopassport (PEP). The obtained results showed that countries with the greater number of EPDs are France and Germany and that construction products are the types of products labelled most. The analysis of the languages used in the EPDs showed that 45% of the identified EPDs are written in local languages. The obtained results have been cross-referenced with the national situations in terms of presence of National Action Plans (NAPs) and mandatory rules regarding GPP.Our analysis revealed that there is correspondence between the presence of a NAP with principles towards GPP and the spread in the market of environmental labelling and that the product sectors covered by EPDs correspond to the sectors covered by GPP criteria.

Revision of the EU Green Public Procurement Criteria for Food Procurement and Catering Services – Certification Schemes as the Main Determinant for Public Sustainable Food Purchases?

Changing public demand in favour of sustainable products is recognised as an important part of “greening” the production of goods, so-called green procurement. 1 Famously, green procurement has been defined as “a process whereby public authorities seek to procure goods, services and works with a reduced environmental impact throughout their life cycle when compared to goods, services and works with the same primary function that would otherwise be procured”. 2 However, when it comes to public buying, public authorities are not free to do what they want. Public authorities are required to advertise the contract, carry out one of the recognised procurement procedures, process bids in the qualification and selection stage according to predetermined criteria, and award the contract according to award criteria, all while respecting binding time frames. Therefore, public procurement regulation has always been characterised by a strong tension between budgetary considerations that would favour the most economically advantageous bids, and the pursuit of other considerations relating to social or environmental goals. EU public procurement rules only gradually allowed the inclusion of certain “green” considerations. Fearing challenges to their procurement procedures, contracting authorities therefore often resort to normal tenders, as “green” tenders are seen as difficult to undertake correctly and marred by legal uncertainty. The Green Public Procurement criteria (“GPP criteria”) were drawn up in order to remedy this problem by providing an example catalogue of permissible tender specifications with the aim of facilitating the take-up by contracting authorities of “green” criteria in their tenders. Food and catering services, with €206.3 billion annual expenditure (in 2011) by the Member States an economically important sector, were an obvious target for the formulation of GPP criteria. 3 An initial version of the GPP criteria for food and catering services was published in 2008, but did not contain very far-reaching example specifications. In the following, we discuss the current revision of the GPP criteria for food, catering services, and vending machines. 4 We outline the relevance of so-called secondary considerations in EU public procurement policy, bringing forward the originally very reluctant approach on behalf of EU policy makers to embrace the greening of public expenditure. We then present the GPP criteria policy-making process, and clarify the different types of procurement criteria that can be included in tendering procedures. We cover the ongoing revision of the GPP criteria on food and catering services, with specific emphasis on food procurement. We argue that the new proposed criteria represent a pragmatic compromise that emerged from intensive stakeholder consultations. The confinement to “green” criteria, while being an improvement to the initial version of the food and catering services GPP criteria, falls shy of full sustainable food purchasing and fails to integrate different policy initiatives at EU level. Lastly, we observe that for the food GPP criteria, reliance on certification schemes remains prevalent as a main determinant for what counts as “green”. In terms of referring to certification schemes in tenders, however, the revised GPP criteria may induce contracting authorities to refer to voluntary food schemes in their tender specifications in a way that is not obviously in line with the procurement law requirements.

Exploiting the Potential of Public Procurement: Opportunities for Circular Economy

SummaryThe objective of a circular economy (CE) is to maintain the value of products, materials, and resources in the economy by closing material loops and minimizing waste generation. In recent years, the role of public procurement has been recognized as an important, but as yet not fully exploited, opportunity by cities and municipalities in their transition toward circular societies. This study analyzed public procurement opportunities to promote CE. Different approaches and examples of circular public procurement were identified using case studies. In addition, opportunities to promote CE through sustainable and green public procurement policy were identified analyzing predefined sustainable or green public procurement criteria. The study concludes that public procurement can promote CE and related business models by setting criteria and requirements for the extension of product life spans, efficiency and/or intensity of use, and efficient cycling of biological or technical materials, as well as for the securing of clean and nonrisky cycles. Circular procurement can occur through the procurement of better‐quality products in circular terms, the procurement of new circular products, the use of business concepts that support the CE, and investments in circular ecosystems. Several sectors and product groups were identified as having potential for circular procurement, such as construction, waste, and wastewater management, transportation, food, and catering, furniture, and textiles. The study also suggests that the use of certain tools, such as performance‐based procurement, life cycle approach, and life cycle costing, as well as criteria concerning reuse and recycling of materials, could promote circular procurement. Market dialogue and cooperation between procurers and actors in the supply chains are important for the future development of circular procurement.

The use of green criteria in the public procurement of food products and catering services: a review of EU schemes

Green Public Procurement (GPP) is currently being used to influence the market to shift to a supply of goods and services to the public sector that have a reduced environmental impact. The food service sector plays a major role in the purchases made by the public sector and due to that relevance deserves attention. The GPP schemes reviewed were those that provide details of the specific environmental criteria used (or recommended) for public tendering of food products and catering services provision. The set of GPP schemes apply to distinct geographical zones within the EU, including national level (e.g. Italy), regional level (e.g. Barcelona) and also local level, as in the case of cities (e.g. Copenhagen) or schools (e.g. a school in Pisa, Italy). The criteria set covers services provision to schools, health and social care, higher education, government office canteens, sports and leisure arenas, prisons and defence services (e.g. army). European and worldwide GPP criteria were not covered by the review made. This exploratory study comprehends a total of 23 GPP schemes. This sample includes eight national schemes, three regional schemes and ten local schemes. The review focused on the scope, for the sector of applicability (e.g. education, healthcare) of the GPP set of criteria and for the type of food products covered. Moreover, this paper analyses the type of GPP criteria in use and how the environmental criteria cover the distinct life cycle stages of the whole food supply chain. Findings from the analysis show that for the majority of schemes the scope of criteria is simultaneously the provision of food products and catering services. Moreover, cities, municipalities and counties are the main public authorities reporting procurement activities for the education sector while national GPP activities are applicable for multiple sectors of activity. The main food products covered by the criteria are fruits and vegetables, dairy products, fish and seafood and meat. Finally, the findings show that the set of criteria from the schemes cover widely the life cycle stages of the food supply chain. The results allowed for a first identification of current practices in the use of GPP criteria within public purchasing of food products and catering services in Europe by national, regional or local governments.

Analysis of key environmental areas in the design and labelling of furniture products: Application of a screening approach based on a literature review of LCA studies

Environmental impacts of production and consumption can be controlled and reduced through instruments such as ecodesign and environmental labelling, which typically involve the analysis of complex product systems. The definition of more sustainable product options is not a trivial task and it can be complicated by factors such as the technical complexity and heterogeneity of products, available literature and impact assessment metrics used. The principles of systematic review and meta-analyses have been used to tailor an approach that can be used, to support eco-design and environmental labelling, for screening the environmental literature of products and the preliminary analysis of key environmental areas and improvement options. The approach has been applied to the furniture product group, for which 82 documents related to environmental aspects for different furniture products were collected.The screening and analysis consisted of three steps: 1.selection of reference impact categories;2.screening of studies according to a qualitative–quantitative framework;3.analysis of selected studies and extraction of relevant information. Five impact categories have been analysed: Acidification, Climate Change, Eutrophication, Ozone Depletion, Photochemical Ozone Formation. Analysis of documents covering a broad group of furniture products has allowed the understanding of critical areas, improvement options and technical aspects on which to concentrate investigation efforts in order to reduce the life cycle impacts.The approach can, in general, be adapted to any products for addressing the further development and implementation of measures with which to promote more sustainable options (e.g., ecodesign, environmental labelling, green public procurement criteria).

Environmental sustainability in European public healthcare.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to enlarge the debate concerning the influence of leadership on environmental sustainability implementation in European public healthcare organisations. Design/methodology/approach - This paper is a viewpoint. It is based on preliminary analysis of European standards dedicated to environmental sustainability and their spread across Europe in public healthcare organisations. Viewpoints concerning leadership are then discussed and asserted. Findings - This paper found a limited implementation of standards such as Green Public Procurement criteria, Eco-Management and Audit Scheme and ISO 14001 in public healthcare. Some clues indicate that the lack of implementation is related to leadership and management commitment. Originality/value - For the first time, this paper investigates relationships between leadership and environmental sustainability in European public healthcare opening further avenues of research on the subject.

Green Public Procurement--European Law, Environmental Standards and 'What To Buy' Decisions

The EU's 'Europe 2020 Strategy' and 'Sustainable Development Strategy' portray 'green procurement' by public purchasers as an essential market-based instrument to achieve the EU's economic, environmental and energy goals. The ability of public purchasers to play the role assigned to them depends upon their freedom to require that the things they purchase meet high environmental standards. It has, however, been suggested that EU law itself prevents them from demanding that their purchases must meet such standards, and especially that it prevents them from requiring that they meet standards higher than the EU's harmonised standards for the general marketing of products. This article argues that such a conclusion is not justified by the CJEU's procurement jurisprudence; and that it conflicts with the two strategies mentioned above, with indications given in the EU's procurement legislation, and with the Commission's practice as regards the development of green public procurement criteria.

Assessment of criteria development for public procurement from a strategic sustainability perspective

Green public procurement has emerged as a policy instrument with a significant potential to steer procurers' and producers' decisions in a sustainable direction. The purpose of this study is to assess the process for development of green public procurement criteria at a Swedish governmental expert body from a strategic sustainability perspective, i.e. to identify strengths and weaknesses from such a perspective as a basis for making this process more supportive of sustainable product and service innovation. A previously published framework for strategic sustainable development is used for the assessment. The assessment shows that the criteria development process is transparent, well-documented and that it encourages a high level of participation by the members of the working groups. However, the assessment also points to several weaknesses of the process. These include, e.g., a limited impact perspective and lack of a clear definition of sustainability objectives. The development process therefore results in criteria which mainly concern a selection of current environmental impacts outside the context of long-term objectives and consequently there are no strategies to prepare for future processes. The conclusion is that the current process may result in improvements as regards some known environmental problems, but to allow for a strategic approach that could more significantly promote innovative product-service system solutions in support of sustainable development, process changes are needed. Essential process changes are proposed in this paper.

A life cycle approach to Green Public Procurement of building materials and elements: A case study on windows

Green Public Procurement (GPP) is a significant policy tool for reducing the environmental impacts of services and products throughout their whole life cycle. Scientific and easily verifiable environmental criteria, based on a life cycle approach, should be developed and used within procurement procedures. In this paper, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to wood windows showing how it can support the criteria definition. After a foreword on GPP development in Italy, the evaluation features of the environmental performances of building materials and components are outlined. The LCA case study is then presented, describing the use of the analysis results to define the environmental criteria. LCA allowed to identify the main impacts and the critical processes of the window life cycle, giving a scientific framework to discuss GPP criteria with manufacturers associations and stakeholders. Nevertheless, it couldn’t help neither in identifying detailed criteria for GPP nor to define numerical thresholds to be used as reference in procurement procedures. The appropriate strategies should be selected taking into account the technical status of the market, the standard development and the voluntary industry commitments, involving manufacturers associations. Finally, some elements to develop a structured approach for GPP of construction materials are presented.

Using Green Public Procurement (GPP) for sustainable consumption and production

AbstractEach year public authorities spend approximately 2 trillion euros (17% of the EU's Gross Domestic Product) on purchasing a variety of goods, services and works. If they can be encouraged to purchase environmentally friendly products and services instead of conventional ones with the same functions, they can save energy, natural resources and water, reduce harmful emissions and hazardous substances, generate less waste, improve health and stimulate behavioural change towards sustainable consumption and production. In this way, public authorities will be promoting modes of production that are more environmentally friendly and stimulate the supply of green goods and services. Politically GPP has been widely recognised as a powerful voluntary instrument in most of the Member States. At EU level European Commission sets a target that, by 2010, 50% of all tendering procedures should be green, where green means compliant with endorsed common core GPP criteria. Also, GPP guidance tools have been developed, together with common criteria for 10 priority product groups, and translated into all EU languages. However, in order to make GPP a standard practice of procurement procedure, more needs to be done to develop further common GPP criteria, and to train procurement officials, and possibly to establish a product database at EU level.