Research news

3E Centre co-leads a study on green public procurement

A research team from the 3E (Environment, Economy and Energy) Research Centre of Brussels School of Governance has published a comprehensive report for the Office of the Prime Minister of Finland on greening public procurement. The research consortium in Project HILMI, with professor Harri Kalimo as the Principal Investigator and Max Jansson, Lea Mateo and Selçukan Unekbas contributing, included also the University of Eastern Finland, Finnish Environment Institute and the Lappeenranta University of Technology. The objective of project HILMI was to find out how legislation and other means of governance should be developed, and the procurement activities monitored and measured, in order to decrease the carbon and environmental footprints of public procurement in a cost-efficient manner. The project was implemented in three stages. First, the project team created a classification of product groups on the basis of their ”environmental impact potential”. The classification allowed to identify the product groups, on which to focus governance measures as a priority. Second, HILMI investigated how the different means of governance should be developed so as to take environmental considerations into account in procurement. It found five themes that deserve particular attention. Third, the research group proposed that the monitoring and reporting of procurement systematically include the environmental considerations of the inputs (tender documents), output (the tender that was awarded the contract) as well as the impacts (caused by the procured products) of procurement. The report contains 24 policy recommendations for more sustainable public procurement.