CLIMATE CHANGE
The Overlooked Weapon in the Fight Against Climate Change
These are the innovative local governments using Green Public Procurement to address environmental problems
Climate change is a global issue with no clear solution. In the United States, some of the consequences of climate change include: high temperatures, sea level rise, wildfires, precipitation changes, and changes in the ecosystem and migration of species. These shifts adversely affect health and quality of life, yet some groups are more affected than others.
Governments have at their disposal various financial tools that aim to mitigate climate change mitigation. One such policy instrument is public procurement, especially green public procurement (GPP), which is an innovative way for public managers to induce environment-friendly production of public goods and services. In contrast to environmental regulation, GPP policies are voluntary and use market demand rather than coercion.
What is Green Public Procurement?
Governments at all levels spend significant dollar amounts on purchasing goods, services and works to support their day-to-day operation and deliver public services. Traditionally, securing the lowest cost was the main goal. GPP incorporates environmentally conscious criteria into the traditional procurement process and is often referred to as sustainable public procurement. Thus, public procurement becomes an effective demand-side tool to influence private sectors’ products and services towards environmentally friendly behaviors.
Environmental criteria can include reduced energy consumption, reduced packaging, extended lifetime of products, waste reduction, recycling, and/or reduced resource use. These requirements may be incorporated in all stages of the procurement process, starting with selection criteria (contractor capacity), through award criteria, and finishing with technical specifications and contractual clauses.
By using environmental criteria as part of the selection criteria, governments ensure contractor capacity — the potential supplier has the environmental competence to perform under the contract. By employing environmental criteria at the award stage, an organization assigns extra points for environmental protection requirements such as: proof environmental training for employees, eco-labels for products, life-cycle cost, and usage of electricity from renewable sources. The technical specifications, for example, can include requirements on the utilization of products or services that are superior in environmental performance. Lastly, the contract design should be inclusive of environmental clauses.
Green public procurement practices are adopted and implemented to a varying extent across local political and economic contexts. Because GPP is generally overlooked as a climate change mitigation effort, I was curious why some local governments adopt such policies, while others do not. My first solo-authored paper that came out of my dissertation asks: under what circumstances US local governments engage with GPP practices? The article recently appeared in the International Journal of Public Sector Management under the title Determinants of local government innovation: The case of green public procurement in the United States.
Determinants of Buying Green
To gauge the drivers behind environment-friendly purchasing, I reviewed the then literature on the topic and developed a survey instrument. The questionnaire was disseminated in 2018 using the professional network of NIGP: The Institute for Public Procurement. NIGP is a non-profit organization that focuses on developing, supporting, and promoting the public procurement profession through premier educational and research programs, professional support, technical services, and advocacy initiatives.
I find that organizational characteristics and capacity are the main determinants of GPP adoption. First, leadership and organizational culture are paramount. To instill changes to traditional procurement systems, it is essential to have supportive leaders who incorporate GPP into the agency’s strategic vision and create supportive organizational culture and processes. Additionally, GPP entails organizational learning. Local governments must first become aware of GPP practices before considering their adoption and implementation. Third, the federal government is an important influencer of local government GPP adoption. The availability of federal funds could induce policy changes at the local level.
One example is the inclusion of specific mandates to receive grant funding. If local governments want to access these funds, they need to comply with mandates. An unexpected finding of this study is the negative impact of market availability on GPP adoption. One explanation is that while the market has evolved and offers green alternatives, these likely are not competitive enough to outprice and outnumber traditional commodities.
In wrapping up this post, I want to emphasize the power of green public procurement as a tool to mitigate environmental degradation. The decision-making process around green public procurement policies is ultimately driven by who leads the organization, organizational familiarity with the GPP concept and best practices, as well as mandates through federal government funding. Public managers may want to raise GPP awareness and equip procurement professionals with the necessary skills to implement environment-friendly purchasing.
