PROCUREGREEN - Public Procurement – a necessary tool for green transition

The PROCUREGREEN research project will provide a unique and unprecedented insight into how green approaches are used in the various parts of the procurement procedures in Denmark with the aim of making public procurement an important element for green transition and a more sustainable economy.

Green leaves

Public procurement in Denmark is responsible for 12 billion tons of CO2-emission annually. The major role of public procurement in the economy makes it a significant and necessary tool for green transition. The need for more research on how to use Green Public Procurement (GPP) is essential in order to use the public purchasing power to promote environmentally responsible procurement. This research project aims at 1) analysing how green requirements can legally be taken into account in public purchasing and whether such should become mandatory, 2) examining national data on how GPP is used (and not used) in public contracts and 3) facilitating learning about best practice and at last examine how contracting authorities can ensure that suppliers comply with the green requirements in the contracts.

WP 1 Legal barriers to GPP

WP1 aims to analyse the possibilities for including green elements in public purchasing and whether there is room for creating mandatory green criteria at EU-level or national level, hence changing the focus of the procurement rules to what to buy and not only how to buy.

WP1 will examine how green elements can be included in the different phases of the procurement procedure under technical specifications, award criteria and/or contract clauses. Tenderers can compete for the contract based on green criteria. Award criteria must be linked to the subject matter of the contract, and Member States have reported that “the lack of legal certainty on the correct interpretation of the requirement for ‘link to the subject matter of the contract’ and the general fear of litigation;” is to be seen as one of the main challenges they encountered in the implementation of GPP. WP 1 aims at creating legal certainty for contracting authorities by clarifying the rules on rules on how to conduct GPP.

PI Carina Risvig Hamer,

Participants: professor Ole Helby Petersen (RUC)

WP 2 Using GPP in Danish public procurement

WP2 aims to understand how contracting authorities are using green requirements. The research project will analyse data on green standards and sustainability criteria used by public authorities and examine how GPP is being conducted.

Knowledge from the data will give an understanding of how authorities can design GPP, and identify lessons for learning across authorities and contracts The examined data will help to understand whether the procurement rules supports or hinders GPP and how green elements are used.

Participants: PI and professor Ole Helby Petersen (RUC)

WP 3 Enforcement of GPP

WP 3 will analyse contract clauses and monitoring arrangements to establish whether contracting authorities follow up on the green requirements and how they do so and examine how contractual measures can be applied in the event of non-compliance with green criteria in the contracts. The data for WP 3 will be collected as a part of WP 2. The data will be used to analyse the connection (or lack of connection) between the different parts of the contract, e.g. the connection between green requirements and non-compliance provisions in the contracts.

Furthermore, interviews with contracting authorities will be conducted to identify reasons behind the structure of the contracts The interviews will give us an insight into why certain green requirements were or were not enforced in the contract.

As a concluding point of WP3, it will be examined if there is potential for introducing new contract management tools.

Participants: PI and professor Ole Helby Petersen (RUC)

De Grønne Udbudsmorgener - Arrangementer (In Danish)

De Grønne Udbudsmorgener er en ny udbudsretlig eventserie, som fokuserer på mulighederne for at inddrage grønne hensyn i offentlige kontrakter. Eventserien er en del af forskningsprojektet PROCUREGREEN.

Se arrangementerne i forbindelse med De Grønne Udbudsmorgener her.