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Project title

Identification of Effective State-of-the-Art Green Public Procurement Policy and Practice for the Irish Public Sector

Primary Funding Agency

Environmental Protection Agency

Co-Funding Organisation(s)

n/a

Lead Organisation

National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG)

Lead Applicant

Jamie Goggins

Project Abstract

Providing a credible evidence base for the impact of Green Public Procurement (GPP) on emissions targets and wider sustainability goals is an essential aspect of ensuring the successful embedding of GPP policy across the public sector but one that has, to date, been unsuccessfully developed in Ireland. Our proposal builds a knowledge of GPP policy and practice both nationally and internationally. It does this using both academic, policy and practitioner literature but also using expert opinion sampled by a participatory GPP practice review. There has been strong progress on GPP in Europe and state of the art examples that will be examined include inter alia Metropolitan and city authorities in Nantes, city and provincial authorities in Antwerp, the Basque Country Government, Municipality of Copenhagen, Barcelona's city council, Aalborg local authority, Sardinia's regional local authorities, Leuven city authorities, Vienna municipality, Cyprus Amaroussion (Greece) and Lithuania municipalities. Progress on GPP in Ireland will be reviewed and state-of-the art examples will be examined, such as those forged by 3CEA with Kilkenny County Council and Wexford County Council amongst others. A number of case studies, recommendations, templates, lists of products and services are developed in a GPP toolkit optimising by purchase theme and across purchase themes. These are then tested in real world pilots in NUI Galway and in local authorities in order to identify what works well and where barriers exist for diverse organisational models. The real world test pilots will provide context to the lists, identify enablers and where barriers and inertias are present and how they can be lifted. The test pilots allow us to develop diverse organisational models for the application of GPP in the public sector in Ireland. The test pilots will decipher the impacts of the low carbon products and services in novel ways due to our investigative lens being focussed on the organisational system. For example opportunities for GPP within the organisational system based in NUI Galway, where pairing management account systems with carbon footprint metrics is a key ambition are explored by the test pilots. Similar organisational investigation takes place in our local authorities test pilots. The inter-disciplinary research investigation provides an understanding on how systemic change can be adopted, generating an innovative Irish GPP toolkit impacting low carbon businesses and markets, diverse organisational models, climate action, the bioeconomy, and the circular economy with case studies, practical recommendations, templates, functional product and service lists and decarbonisation of the public sector. The understanding of how systemic change can positively impact GPP and practice includes a financial rationale for adoption set against Business As Usual scenarios and firmly establishes the benefits of GPP practice going forward. Finally we purposefully disseminate our research activity and learning nationally and internationally placing the EPA and our research team at the forefront of state of the art GPP research and development.

Grant Approved

�199,957.00

Research Hub

Green and Circular Economy

Research Theme

n/a

Start Date

31/03/2022

Initial Projected Completion Date

30/06/2024