The issue of public procurement is a key part of the transition to climate neutrality. Procurement can be a powerful tool to drive a faster transition to climate-neutral and sustainable cities, but how? How can local authorities take a leading role? What are the key areas? What examples of new ways of working on this exist today?
The cities in Viable Cities' Climate Neutral Cities 2030 initiative have engaged with the issue in different ways. One of these cities is Helsingborg, which wants to reduce the climate footprint of public consumption. Helsingborg has enlisted the help of DigitalWellArena, which has developed the Demand Acceleration methodology, which in practice means procuring innovation work and not finished products and services.
Another city working on this is Linköping. They are mapping the climate impact of the municipality's purchases through environmental impact analyses, to increase knowledge about the consumption-based emissions of the operations and develop the strategic procurement work. This is part of the transition to a climate-neutral Linköping and developing the municipality's working methods for procurement, purchasing and investments to accelerate the pace of the climate transition.
Uppsala has also worked extensively with sustainable procurement and has guidelines and policy documents that cover all procurement within the municipal group. The policy documents aim to ensure that all procurements take into account economic sustainability and business, social sustainability and ecological sustainability.
The Climate Breakfast will feature:
- Friederike May Winther, Sustainability Coordinator in Procurement, Uppsala Municipality
- Sandra Viktor, Process Manager, Climate Neutral Linköping 2030
- Camilla Alfredsson, Purchasing Manager, City of Helsingborg
Tips that came up during the Climate Breakfast:
- The big cities and the Swedish Transport Administration have joined forces for climate requirements in contracts
- The Swedish Public Procurement Agency's sustainability criteria for procurement with a focus on environmental and social sustainability
- Infra Sweden - Client network for a climate-neutral construction sector
