Barbara Morton: Green Public Procurement is not more expensive

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With green public procurement we can target best certain areas like CO₂, you say. When did UK start with the green public procurement?

Sustainable development has been on the agenda for a long time. For example we have a list of product standards that goes way back to 2003. They have recently changed the name from the sustainable “quick wins” list to government buying standards. They cover the range of the sorts of product categories that is very similar to the commission priority product groups. There are number of areas where public procurement is seen as one of the mechanisms for driving down carbon emissions.

The product groups that are covered by the formally called “quick wins list” were increased from 27 to 45, and currently there are 46 or thereabouts. These are product categories, where they are for example IT equipment or office equipment, there are desk tops, lap tops multifunctional devices, laser printers, etc.

Are there studies that show where you can save the most?

We have had some cost benefit analyses done. All of the quick wins have been through the cost benefit analysis. We have two sets of standards in that list. One is the minimum technical specification which is the minimum standard that central government should be using. The other one is called the best practice standard where you may have to pay some more upfront, but the chances are that over the lifetime there will be energy savings and is therefore more cost effective in the long term. Anyway, there will be more people who buy them and the economies of scale should be such that they should be reducing the price over time. They can be used in other parts of the public sector, local government, and health care sector, or anyone in the public sector could use those products. So the involvement of the wider public sector would again tend towards the price decrease over time.

How did the implementation look like?

The work has been going on for a number of years and a lot of research activity and working with the market took a substantial amount of time and effort. But now the fact that these lists of products have been in existence for seven years means that most people in the central government were at least aware of those quick wins, but they do not always buy them. In fact some of our reports of public procurement say that we do not buy them to the extent we should. But nevertheless they are there and the people can use them relatively easily because specifications have been developed for them.

In Slovenia Green Public Procurement will be “a must”, how is it in UK?

As a matter of fact, we say that the standards are actually mandatory for the central government departments, but the studies made since 2003 has shown that not everyone actually buys them. The challenge is now how do we make those standards stick. How do we impose them? The task force talks about whether there is a need for some sort of a penalty on departments who do not buy them, but so far there is none, there is only criticism.

What are the benefits of Green Public Procurement?

On the demand side it makes it easier for public procurers to achieve a higher standard because the work has been done and on the supply side it develops markets, increases the volume of the market and therefore increased demand means that greener products and services are more competitive and we can perhaps grow our economies on low carbon technologies, for example.

The most common arguments against Green Public Procurement are that it is more expensive than the conventional procurement as well as problematic from the legal point of view.

It is not problematic from the legal point of view. The EU rules say nothing about the requirement the subject matching the contract, so it is quite legitimate to put green or sustainable in the title of your contract and subject matter.

And it is not more expensive. Sometimes in the short term it is not more expensive and most of the time in the longer term, if you do not take just the purchase price but the life time costs, then green products are more cost effective.

Where do you see the mayor barriers to green procurement?

The barriers are often more perceived then real, because they are perceptions of cost increases and also perceptions of it being harder either to find these products or to buy them for some technical reason. But in fact we find that none of these barriers are true in practice, it is just the myth, if you like, the perceived barrier that public procurers often use.

How do you stimulate green procurement?

We are doing a lot of training and capability building not just with procurers but with specifications and uses of those products and services as well; it is not just about products, we are focusing also on the need for more sustainable services. So we are thinking about outcome, bringing in not just procurement. The people who define their requirement come up with the specification, and they are often not in the procurement. We need to build their understanding of GPP as well.

Great Britain appears very green?

Some of us would still say in public procurement we are not doing enough. We are not doing everything we should be doing. So we find a lot of practices that are not as green or sustainable as we would like them to be.

For example?

Not everyone is buying the quick win products, not everyone is considering environment when they scope their requirement in the first place. We are still constructing public buildings which are not sustainable.