Harnessing Public Procurement for the Green Transition

Portugal

Framework, scope, action-plans

The strategic framework governing GPP is Portugal currently defined by the (second) National Strategy for Green Public Procurement for the period 2017-2020 (or ENCPE 2020), which applies public entities that are part of the State’s direct and indirect administration, as well as to the State's business sector.

The Strategy promotes the definition of “green” technical specifications for a list of priority goods and services based on the EU GPP criteria, which needs to be adapted, by multidisciplinary working groups and in a phased manner, to the national market. Moreover, the Strategy defines a set of GPP-related targets for the list of priority goods and services:

1. Goal 1: % of public pre-contractual procedures that include environmental criteria.

 

	2017-2018	2019-2020
Direct and indirect administration of the State	55%	60%
State Business Sector	35%	40%

2.  Goal 2: % of the financial amount associated with public pre-contractual procedures that include environmental criteria.

 

	2017-2018	2019-2020
Direct and indirect administration of the State	55%	60%
State Business Sector	35%	40%

The Portuguese Environmental Agency (APA), the Institute for Public Markets, Construction and Real Estate (IMPIC), the Shared Services for Public Administration (ESPAP), and the Shared Services for Health Ministry (SPMS) are the entities responsible for co-ordinating ENCEP 2020. They are also responsible to monitoring its implementation.

The National Strategy for GPP is included in the country’s commitments on climate action, namely in the National Energy and Climate Plan 2030, which recognise the potential of GPP to decarbonise the public administration (Measure 1.5.3). Moreover, the Climate Fundamental Law (Lei de Bases do Clima) considers sustainable public procurement (in art. 37 and 39) as a key instrument to be adopted across Portugal’s public administration to achieve climate neutrality in public procurement.

Other national plans and legal provisions that mention GPP and include GPP-related objectives are the National Climate Act, the Public Administration Resource Efficiency Programme, the National Circular Economy Action Plan (currently under revision), and the Strategy for Innovation and Modernization of Public Administration 2020-2023. The latter entails specific targets for the three main ministerial areas for green public procurement, until 2023.

Implementation

ENCPE 2020 encourages State’s entities and business sector to adopt environmental criteria in public procurement, without setting any mandatory GPP requirement. It also identifies a list of 21 priority goods and services for GPP implementation:

• Office Buildings

• Electricity

• Imaging equipment

• Electrical and electronic equipment used in healthcare

• Office IT Equipment

• Interior lighting

• Street lighting and road signs

• Infrastructure and equipment for the treatment, supply and distribution of water, collection and treatment of waste water and municipal waste

• Road infrastructure and traffic signals

• Furniture

• Interior panels

• Copy paper and graphic paper

• Combined heat and power

• Food products and catering services

• Gardening Products & Services

• Cleaning products and services

• Heating systems with water circulation

• Flush systems in toilets and urinals

• Textile

• Sanitary taps

• Transport.

Supportive manuals containing national GPP criteria are published on the official website of APA (ENCPE | site_encpe (apambiente.pt)) for some of the priority procurement categories. These criteria should be integrated in public procurement by State’ entities and business sector. Local authorities are not part of ENCPE’s scope but, they can still use GPP criteria on a voluntary basis.

Measurement and impact

All public entities are required to report on public procurement through the main e-Procurement system, i.e. Portal BASE, which is managed by IMPIC. Moreover, contracting authorities are required to report on GPP through a digital platform linked to the e-Procurement platform Portal BASE. Currently Portal BASE has a search functionality for procurement procedures that are classified as "Sustainable Contract". This search option can be found in the advanced search of the contract or notice pages.

An aggregated evaluation of the impacts of GPP for the period 2017-2020 has also been conducted, and it focused on the total number of GPP procurement procedures and financial impacts.

In order to promote the usage of green criteria in public procurement procedures, and as the managing entity of the National Public Procurement System (SNCP), ESPAP, IP has included in the framework agreements it awards, to the maximum possible extent, green criteria in one of more of the following stages:

• in the qualification of the suppliers within each framework agreement and/or

• when defining the technical and/or functional specification of the goods and services available in each framework agreement and/or

• during the execution stage.

SNCP’s framework agreements have included green criteria since 2008, as the promotion of sustainable procurement was set as one of SNCP major strategic goals.

It is relevant to refer that the SNCP has been more ambitious in promoting green criteria in public procurement than the ENCPE itself, in the sense that framework agreements in categories beyond the 21 prioritaire ones, like Software Licensing, Maintenance of HVAC Systems or Maintenance of Lifting Systems.

As the framework themselves included green criteria, all the procedures conducted under them included green criteria. This strongly contributed to the usage of green criteria by public contracting authorities in procedures for these categories. Some public entities have already taken part to initiatives to assess energy and CO₂ reductions over the whole life cycle of products, services and works. For example, the GPP2020 Project that led to the design of CO₂ reduction calculators for energy Contracting, office ICT, street lighting and vehicles. Nevertheless, there is no standardised methodology to measure CO₂ emissions savings in green public tenders.

Under the Public Administration Resource Efficiency Programme, some public institutions (i.e. those with a level of energy consumption and number of employees above a certain threshold) are required to report their annual energy consumption, which must be converted in CO₂ emissions. Public procurement operations and activities are also covered.

Recent developments

The new National Strategy for Green Public Procurement 2030, known as ECO360, was in the last stages of the legislative process final development stage at the time of Survey, and was published on February 10^th, 2023, by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers n.º 13/2023 (https://encpe.apambiente.pt/sites/default/files/documentos/RCM_13.2023_ECO360.pdf). The new strategy builds upon the lessons learned and raises the level of ambitions in terms of GPP targets and scope of implementation. This legislation introduced major updates in the previous ENCPE 2020, aiming to, among other things,

• extend the scope of public entities that should adopt this GPP strategy

• extend the scope of categories of goods and services whose procedures should include green / social / sustainable criteria

• define ambitious targets of usage of green / social / sustainable criteria in public procurement procedures per type of public entity, type of procedure

• define the governance model, clear roles and responsibilities for different public entities (ESPAP, APA, IMPIC) so as to

  • assure clear co-ordination among them

  • guarantee specific and clear documentation as well as technical and specialised support provided to every public contracting entity in order to help them implement ECO360

  • define monitoring process and responsibilities

In terms of monitoring, at the time of Survey, a new section in Portal Base was under development to show statistics and indicators on the use of environmental criteria in public tenders.