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The application of environmental criteria in public procurement is now an integral part of the environmental policy portfolio at the EU level and in Germany. There is great potential to utilise the award of public contracts as a means of supporting environmental and climate goals. If all public purchasing were to favour energy-efficient and low-carbon technologies, the German public sector's CO2 emissions could be reduced by as much as 30 % within 10-12 years. European and national public procurement legislation has created the legal security that is required for coupling the award of public contracts to fulfilment of environmental criteria. However, policy- makers must ensure that the available opportunities are used in practice and that the remaining obstacles in procurement practice are removed.
I. Introduction
Sustainability means reconciling economic efficiency, environmental protection and social responsibility in a manner which ensures that decisions respect the long-term needs of present and future generations. Sustainable procurement endeavours to integrate environmental and social aspects into purchasing decisions. The following article focuses on green procurement and does not deal with the far more complex dimension of compliance with social criteria, such as the elimination of child labour from the supply chain. The advantage of green procurement, by comparison, is that it generally allows clear, quantifiable and measurable technical criteria to be applied.
II. Significance of GPP
Environmental policy must find responses to the following megatrends which are, and will continue to be, characteristic of the present century:
- a rapidly growing world population,
- "catch-up" industrialisation in emerging economies such as China and India,
- growing global demand for energy and raw materials, which is linked to both the above factors
- worsening environmental problems: Climate change, increasing scarcity of resources such as rare earth metals and clean water, and loss of habitats and biodiversity.
Given our current approach to the management of raw materials and our over-exploitation of natural resources, the carrying capacity of the Earth's ecosystems is likely to be exhausted within the foreseeable future. Some negative trends are already irreversible, with mitigation now the only option. Climate change is the obvious example.
As a result of these problems, the pressure on environmental policy is immense, requiring every available form of leverage to be applied: Classic...