Environmental Criteria in the Spanish Public Works Procurement Process

Abstract

Green Public Procurement (GPP) is defined as a process of contracting products, services, and works with the least possible damage to the environment during their life cycle. In order to improve the knowledge about GPP, a study of the use of environmental tendering criteria in the Spanish public construction sector has been performed. The results of this study show that the use of environmental criteria in Spanish public sector construction procurement is low in comparison to a certain group of countries, known as “Green 7”, in the European Union. Environmental criteria is the fourth criterion in importance, but its weight in the global of the process is much lower than other criteria such as price, memory of the construction process and the delivery time. National administrations use environmental criteria more frequently because they have more resources and staff training about environmental issues. Environmental criteria are more used in the tendering of civil projects and works whose budget exceeds ten million euro due to the environmental impact of these kind and/or size of projects.

Green Public Procurement in the Academic Literature

“…Which is the impact of the procedures related with the GPP? ), many studies have analysed the governmental procedures regarding the integration of the environmental criteria in the public offers of purchase (Oruezabala and Rico, 2012;Pacheco-Blanco and Bastante-Ceca, 2016;Varnäs et al, 2009;Nissinen et al, 2009;Faith-Ell, 2005;Fet et al, 2011;Testa et al, 2016a;Lundberg et al, 2016;Michelsen and de Boer, 2009), the level of use of these criteria in different countries (Nissinen et al, 2009;Fuentes-Bargues et al, 2017), the factors that influence the inclusion of the green criteria in the public auctions (Testa et al, 2012), the effects of including environmental criteria in the offers of purchase (Parikka-Alhola, 2008). The contracting authorities must award a contract based on the most economically advantageous offer (by applying the criteria: price, cost, quality-price ratio, quality-cost ratio).…”

“…Numerous difficulties related to the GPP were highlighted in the analysed studies. Among them, we mention the lack of clarity of the environmental criteria (Michelsen and de Boer, 2009;Testa et al, 2012;Nissinen et al, 2009), the existence of too generic criteria, which prevents the easy verification by the contracting authority for their compliance (Fuentes-Bargues et al, 2017), the poor presence of environmental criteria in the evaluation of tenders, rarely affecting the awarding decisions (Varnäs et al, 2009;Fuentes-Bargues et al, 2018 ), including them mainly as technical specifications (Testa et al, 2016b). The use of environmental criteria is encountered in the case of national administrations to a greater extent, because they have more resources and better training of personnel on environmental issues (Fuentes-Bargues et al, 2017).…”

“…Further research is needed to clarify the inclusion of environmental criteria in the tenders and their actual use in the selection of suppliers (for example, understanding the discrepancy between the degree to which municipalities declare that in the final selection of suppliers they take into account the environmental aspects and the perception of that have potential suppliers, the search for possible relationships between an increased use of environmental criteria in the tenders and a possible increased use in the final selection of the supplier - Michelsen and Boer, 2009;Faith-Ell, 2005;Fet and et al, 2011), identifying the stages of the procurement process in which environmental criteria are included and analysing the role they play in the award of the contract (Testa et al, 2012), checking whether the projects that contained more environmental preferences were more expensive than others (Varnäs et al, 2009), the development of assessment tools for the environmental criteria in the contracting process (Fuentes-Bargues et al, 2018), analysis of the extent to which the contract award decisions were influenced by environmental considerations (Testa et al, 2016b), elaboration of the criteria for environment that quantifies the provisions proposed by the bidders (Fuentes-Bargues et al, 2017). Testa et al (2012) argue that, in the future, specialists should establish whether there are differences in the implementation of GPPs between product categories and for which public authorities have encountered greater obstacles, to analyse the effects of different types of environmental criteria, such as performance and functional criteria and to investigate the synergies between the available European environmental policy instruments, including GPPs, the eco-label, EMAS and the environmental footprint of the product, to highlight the strengths and weaknesses and ways to improve these synergies.…”

Toward a Theoretical Framework for Studying Climate Change Policies: Insights from the Case Study of Singapore

“…Green procurement, which is part of Sustainable Public Procurement Program under the United Nations Environment Program [63], surfaced as a sub-theme during the pilot coding. While this suggested the presence of green procurement as a hypothesized upstream intervention mechanism, studies have shown supply chain and knowledge gaps in operationalizing this and thus mixed results of this emerging phenomenon [86][87][88]. Further in-depth studies of green procurement could be conducted to deepen the understanding and application, particularly in Asia.…”

Key factors hindering sustainable procurement in the Brazilian public sector: A Delphi study

“…To date extant literature indicates a limited exploration in the context of the public sector [9], [13], [18], with the great majority of these studies being carried out in private companies [19]- [22]. Furthermore, there is a preponderance of works conducted in developed countries such as Sweden [23], UK [16], [24][25][26], Spain [3], [27], The Netherlands [7], [28], USA [18], [29], Australia [30], Norway [1], Denmark [31], Germany [32] and Canada [33], while SPP surveys within the context of developing and underdeveloped countries have been systematically neglected [34]. Whereas achieving a sustainable level of consumption and production 'requires a diversified approach in developed and developing economies' [35] since their intrinsic characteristics vary in relation to their consumption patterns, economic condition, industrialization level, demography and socio-cultural factors [34], [36], this research fills this gap through a study in Brazil, a developing country and the largest economy in Latin America.…”