Public procurement represents at least 11% of the EU’s emissions. However, the majority of public procurement contracts across the EU are awarded based on price alone, thus do not take into account the climate effects or other environmental costs that occur over the project’s lifecycle. The EU acknowledges the need to reform procurement systems to align with climate goals and the strategic potential public demand has for decarbonisation. However, the uptake of green public procurement policies has been modest and the Fit for 55 package has missed the opportunity to reform the EU’s public procurement framework.

In this coffee hour, Maiju Mähönen from UEF and Leon Martini from Ecologic Institute presented a report by the 4i-TRACTION project on what options exist for developing the EU procurement framework in line with the challenge of climate neutrality. Centrally, they discussed the idea of public procurement for climate neutrality, where public demand is used strategically to accelerate the transformation of key industries. Aiming these results towards the ongoing negotiations of the Net Zero Industry Act as well as the Construction Products Regulation, they linked the discussion to relevant debates and sectoral legislation.