Harnessing Public Procurement for the Green Transition

Netherlands

Framework, scope, action-plans

In 2015, the Government of Netherland published the Action Plan for Responsible and Sustainable Procurement (RSP) by governments for the period 2015 - 2020. The main purpose behind the Plan was to raise awareness on the potentials of public procurement to achieve national environmental objectives and to strengthen capacity of public buyers to adopt sustainable procurement solutions.

The Action Plan promotes the use of public procurement to realising government's sustainability objectives, as set out in the Energy Agreement for Sustainable Growth, the Local Climate Agenda and the “From Refuse to Raw Material” Programme, such as counteracting climate change and achieving climate-neutrality by 2050, reducing final energy consumption and increasing the share of renewable energy generation, improving the use of raw materials to handle them more efficiently, and protecting the natural capital of the country. Moreover, public procurement is also mentioned as a key leverage to achieve the objectives set out in the Dutch Climate Agreement, especially to achieve zero-emission transportation, zero-emission building vehicles, improve environmental performance of infrastructure projects, and foster the transition to a circular economy.

The Plan emphasises the need to create additional agreements across governments to increase uniformity, effectiveness, and implementation of RSP. It also identifies 4 key steps to undertake:

1. Defining collective ambitions and objectives for the design process and implementation of RSP for the 2016 - 2020 period, which the national, local and regional governments (both umbrella organisations and/or individual governments), the business world and social parties support;

2. Develop a monitoring system and keep track of progress on ambitions and objectives;

3. Foster knowledge, supportive instruments for implementation and training of public sector public procurement practitioners and clients;

4. Improve the structure for control and governance.

The Dutch Ministry of Environment and Water is the institution responsible for overseeing SPP.

Implementation

The central government defines (voluntary) SPP criteria contracting authorities can use as reference when preparing tenders documents (e.g. suitability requirements, selection criteria, requirements, rewarding criteria and contract provisions). These SPP criteria are provided both in Dutch and English, and they cover around 46 different product groups (visit www.sppcriteria.com), including automation and telecommunications, office facilities and services, civil and hydraulic engineering, office buildings, energy, transport and transportation. Moreover, these SPP criteria are updated every year, also to better align and reflect policy changes.

In addition to that, the Netherland has developed other instruments to support GPP implementation for contracting authorities, including:

• The CO₂ Performance Ladder that allows agencies to certify tenders based on their carbon dioxide emissions performance;

• The software DuboCalc that allows to make rapid calculations of sustainability and environmental design variants of ground, road, and water construction through a life-cycle assessment of energy use and materials.

Both these two instruments convert assessment results into price deductions from the initial bid, improving the cost-effectiveness of environmentally sustainable offer at the award stage.

Even though the Action Plan for RSP does not include GPP-related targets, individual governments can still set their own GPP ambitions through a system called “Sustainable Procurement Manifesto” (Manifest Maatschappelijk Verantwoord Inkopen). By signing the Manifesto, public authorities commit to set their objectives, including GPP-related goals, in accordance with their own ambitions, and they also define concrete actions for implementation. The Manifesto was first signed in December 2016, and many other parties have signed up since.

Measurement and impact

Only central government organisations are required to report on their GPP activities by using the SPP Self-evaluation tool (see https://mvizet.nl/accounts/login/?next=/), which is managed by PIANOo (i.e. Dutch Public Procurement Expertise Center), and all reports on GPP activities that are conducted on behalf of the central government are also made publicly available. Moreover, the SPP self-evaluation tool is open for use to other public institutions, therefore they might still decide to report on the use of GPP they have no legal obligation.

For what concerns impact assessment related to public procurement, in 2021, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (under the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport), published a study on the effect of Socially Responsible Procurement over the period 2017-2018, at the national level. The study focused on 15 product groups, divided into 6 different procurement cluster: transport, energy, office facilities, office buildings, civil engineering, and ICT information communication technology.

According to the results of the study, the use of SRP achieved many environmental benefits, including reduced emissions of CO₂, reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides, lower production of particular matter, and lower consumption of raw material.

Recent developments

The Netherlands has recently amended the National Plan on Sustainable Public Procurement for the period 2021-2025, which builds on the assessment of the results and challenges encountered in the implementation of the previous version of the Plan