The law and measurement of carbon and environmental footprints in public procurement

The objective of project HILMI was to find out how legislation and other means of governance should be developed, and the procurement activities monitored and measured, in order to decrease the carbon and environmental footprints of public procurement in a cost-efficient manner. The project was implemented in three stages. First, the project team created a classification of product groups on the basis of their ”environmental impact potential”. The classification allowed to identify the product groups, on which to focus governance measures as a priority. Second, HILMI investigated how the different means of governance should be developed so as to take environmental considerations into account in procurement. Five themes were found to deserve particular attention. Third, the research group proposes that the monitoring and reporting of procurement systematically include the environmental considerations of the inputs (tender documents), output (the tender that was awarded the contract) as well as the impacts (caused by the procured products) of procurement. Finland thus should construct in a step-by-step process a national information system that measures the environmental impacts of public procurement with the help of artificial intelligence.