Umeå University's logo

Advocates of green public procurement (GPP) argue that the public sector can use its purchasing power to influence producers and consumers to reduce their negative impact on the environment. Our aim is to assess GPP as an environmental policy instrument and its ability to lead to the achievement of environmental objectives. Central to our analysis is the extent to which polluting firms choose to adapt to the public sector’s environmental requirements and to invest in greener technologies. Our theoretical finding is that the potential of GPP to function as an objective effective instrument of environmental policy is limited and can actually be counterproductive. From an environmental policy point of view, it is crucial that the GPP aims for an environmental standard beyond the technology of the polluting firms and is designed with reference to defined environmental objectives.

Politicians expect Green public procurement (GPP) to serve as an environmental policy instrument. However, in order for GPP to work as an effective policy instrument it is important to take into consideration potential suppliers’ decisions to participate in the procurement process, the total number of bidders, and the screening of bidders with respect to mandatory green criteria. The aim of this paper is to empirically study GPP in this respect. The analysis presented here is based on data from Swedish cleaning services procurements that are unique in that they contain very detailed information on various environmental standards set by the contracting authorities. We find at best only a weak effect on supplier behavior, and this suggests that the use of GPP in this situation does not live up to its political expectations. 

Throughout the world, green public procurement (GPP) has become an established environmental policy instrument. Advocates of this purchasing policy argue that the public sector can use its buyer power to incentivize industries into becoming less environmentally damaging. I study how GPP is organized in Sweden and the potential supplier’s response to varying buyer market shares. The level of GPP stringency is found to vary systematically with authority type, buyer market share, and political coalition in the relevant council or the Swedish Parliament. The results indicate quite substantial dispersion in GPP stringency and suggest a low degree of coordination when implementing the policy. After controlling for GPP stringency and other covariates, buyer market share is positively associated with the probability of potential suppliers submitting a bid. 

The European Commission encourages public authorities to split procurement contracts into multiple contracts in order to increase the competiveness of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). In this paper, I use data from Swedish public procurement auctions for internal regular cleaning service contracts to study the effect of contract size and number of contracts on SME participation and the probability of submitting the winning bid. I found that SME participation is negatively related to both contract size and the number of contracts in the procurement. A possible interpretation is that reduced contract size in order to stimulate SME participation is counteracted by reduced incentives for them to enter into procurements with multiple contracts. Medium-sized firms are also more successful when bidding for smaller contracts relative to large firms. Nevertheless, the results indicate that the SMEs’ award rate is positively correlated with the number of contracts in the procurement.