The conference “Environment, ethics and efficiency improvement in public procurement”

Environmental criteria for public ICT procurement

Minister Heidi Grande Røys and State Secretary Heidi Sørensen. Photo: Bjørn Sigurdsøn, Scanpix.

A new set of recommended criteria for the Norwegian public sector when procuring ICT equipment was launched at the procurement conference hosted by the Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (Difi) on November 26th. The conference had record high participation; as many as 450 participants took part in the arrangement. – Our market power will be used to make clear environmental demands by being demanding customers, said Minister of Government Administration and Reform, Heidi Grande Røys at the conference.

The conference “Environment, ethics and efficiency improvement in public procurement” was fully booked with 450 participants – a record for procurement conferences in Norway. A series of presentations defined the framework requirements for sustainable public procurement (SPP), emphasised leadership responsibility and presented training plans to increase competence and tools to assist procurers from public sector in their day to day work. The airport express train’s environmental policy, the EU-project aimed at enabling borderless electronic public procurement in Europe (PEPPOL) and journalistic work exposing corruption in procurement were also presented at the conference. All the presentations and live streaming of the conference are available at www.difi.no (in Norwegian).

Minister of Government Administration and Reform Heidi Grande Røys and State Secretary Heidi Sørensen from Ministry of the Environment took the opportunity to launch environmental criteria for public procurement of ICT equipment.

As much as the air traffic

- Today’s information technology releases just as much C02 as air traffic; it stands for two percent of the global emissions. For this reason the Norwegian state will hereafter make demands for sustainable public procurement when buying PC’s, printers, copy machines and other ICT equipment. The public sector purchases for as much as 250 billion NOK per year, and this market power will be used to set clear and strong environmental demands by being demanding customers, said Minister Heidi Grande Røys, she continued:

- By implementing environmentally friendly procurement and effective use of ICT we will not only be able to reduce the two percent emissions which the ICT technology is causing. Through the use of video conferencing and electronic meetings, we will also be able to reduce some of the remaining 98 percent.

State Secretary Heidi Sørensen explained that the state hereafter will make demands for ICT products regarding energy consumption, long product lifetime, recycling and safe disposal. Long lifetime will lead to reduced production volumes. The production of a PC includes the use of 22 kilogram chemicals, 1500 litres of water and four times more CO2 emissions that a flight to Brussels. The use of a PC represents another four times as big CO2 emissions.

Environmental criteria

The criteria set is easy to use and can be cut and pasted into the tender documents. The criteria should be used by all state procurers and regional administrations will also be encouraged to use them.
The Norwegian government launched in June 2007 an action plan for Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP), which was put into force on 1st of January 2008. One of the focus areas mentioned in the action plan concerns ICT equipment. Recommended criteria sets wil be developed for ICT and the other specified product areas. The task of drawing up the criteria is given to “Panel for miljøbevisste innkjøp” (The Panel for environmental procurement), administered by Difi. The panel’s web-pages contain environmental criteria for ICT equipment and several other products: www.innkjopspanelet.no