Harnessing Public Procurement for the Green Transition

Finland

Framework, scope, action-plans

Finland’s National Public Procurement Strategy (2020) aims at strengthening the strategic use of public procurement to achieve wider societal goals, including environmental sustainability. The Strategy promotes ecological responsibility in public procurement operations and activities, at all levels of government, and it defines a set of indicators and an action plan with concrete measures.

To ensure the successful implementation of the Strategy and the achievement of its key objectives, public procurement units are supported by the following, as key partners: Motiva, Hansel Ltd, VTT Technical Re-search Centre of Finland, the Finnish Environment Institute, Business Finland and the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, which are all members of the KEINO Competence Centre1 for Sustainable and Innovative Public Procurement.

The potential of green and low-carbon public procurement to support environmental and climate goals, especially in the construction sector, is also mentioned in the broader National Strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035 - “Carbon neutral Finland – 2035 national climate and energy strategy”.

Implementation

The National Public Procurement Strategy is not a binding document. Moreover, the regulatory framework governing the public procurement system does not include any mandatory requirements or targets related to GPP. Nevertheless, the National Act on Public Contracts (1397/2016) encourages and enables environmental and social aspects to be taken into account in public procurement procedure. In addition to that, a Government Resolution from 2013 mandates the state and municipalities to promote energy and environmentally efficient solutions. Notably, the state and municipalities are required to consider cleantech solutions in all public procurements.

The Finnish government does not define national GPP criteria that contracting authority can refer to in public tenders. However, the network-based competence centre for sustainable and innovative public procurement KEINO and Motiva Ltd (i.e. a Finnish state company) offer criteria examples and guidance to the public sector on sustainable public procurement. Notably, Motiva Lts provides a help desk service for assistance.

Measurement and impact

Data on public procurement procedures are collected through Hilma, Finland’s e-Procurement system where contracting authorities publish notices on upcoming tendering procedures as well as contract award notice on the results of procedures. When publishing a contract notice or a contract award notice, it is a mandatory requirement for contracting authorities to report on the sustainability criteria they have included in the procedure. Reporting is done by choosing which of the following criteria themes the contracting authority has used in the procedure:

• Advancing energy efficiency;

• Diminishing CO₂ emissions;

• Advancing circular economy;

• Advancing biodiversity;

• Advancing sustainable food systems;

• Advancing decent working conditions;

• Use of code of conduct clauses;

• Use of employment clauses;

• Enhancing of innovation by surveying new solutions by market dialogue, or procurement of a new solution for the contracting authority or for the market;

• Enhancing participation for SMEs;

• Enhancing participation for end-users in service design phase.

Data from HILMA is collected in a public procurement dashboard, which is published by Finnish State Treasury. Due to the e-Forms-project, no current information since August 2023 is available. The dashboard will be updated to use information from the new e-Forms in the coming future. The data is published at the Front page - Exploreadministration.fi2.

In Finland, public institutions are not mandated to report on their carbon footprint, although some organisations already do it, on a voluntary basis, as part of their annual report.

Recent developments

Motiva has been developing a sustainability criteria data bank for contracting authorities, and criteria are already available at Kriteeripankki for different product and service categories, such as food and catering services, energy, transportation, furniture, construction, cleaning services and chemicals, textiles and healthcare. A contracting authority can search criteria by product group, by sustainability goal, or by a search word. The data bank provides information on basic level and for advanced level.

Moreover, Hansel has developed the data tool “Hankintaluotsi” for contracting authorities to choose material sustainability goals and then by procurement case relevant sustainability criteria. The tool is accessible by all contracting authorities that are registered as Hilma users3.

The National Public Procurement Strategy has new programme period 20204-2027, which takes into account on the top of the previous strategic approach, national data management, overall economy and promotion of competition.

Finally, the preparation for government’s decision in principle for national public procurement ecological targets for reduction of carbon- and biodiversity footprints and enhancement of circular procurement are under elaboration in 2024.