and Environmental Protection
http://ago.helion.pl ISSN 1733-4381, Vol. 12 nr 2 (2010), p-45-48
Management of Public Procurement in Terms of „Green Orders” of Components of a Building
Adamczyk J.,
Uniwersytet Zielonogórski, Wydział Ekonomii i Zarządzania, Ul. Podgórna 50,
65-246 Zielona Góra, tel. 683282237,
e-mail: J.Adamczyk@wez.uz.zgora.pl
Abstract
The paper discusses management of “green” public procurement related to components of a building. It presents proposals of environmental criteria, that have been analyzed in their essence, and which are used for assessment of components of a building. Attention was drawn to the need of applying a universal environmental instrument, namely LCA into environmental criteria of public procurement. The justification for the necessity of using LCA analysis refers to basic normative documents as well as environmental policy.
Streszczenie
Zarządzanie zamówieniami publicznymi w aspekcie „zielonych zamówień”
komponentów budynku
W artykule omówiono zarządzanie „zielonymi” zamówieniami publicznymi w zakresie komponentów budynku. Przedstawiono propozycje kryteriów środowiskowych służących ocenie komponentów budynku, które zostały poddane analizie merytorycznej. Zwrócono uwagę na konieczność zastosowania uniwersalnego instrumentu środowiskowego – LCA w kryteriach środowiskowych zamówień publicznych. W uzasadnieniu konieczności stosowania analizy LCA przywołano podstawowe dokumenty normatywne oraz polityki środowiskowej.
1. Introduction
Problems of public procurement in the Polish law are governed by the Act of January 29th, 2004 Public procurement law1. The Act especially concerns the public finance sector, as well as other businesses disposing of public resources. It describes procedures related to spending public resources in terms of selecting contractors as well as the rules of signing contracts.
Many scientific publications have been dedicated to public procurement in organizations, yet environmental approach according to the sustainable development paradigm is a relatively innovative idea both in Poland and worldwide. A document introducing this subject is “Green Book. Public procurement in European Union”; it is historically the oldest document that refers to the idea of “green orders”. It contains a separate chapter entitled “procurement versus environment”. This document states, that: “Actions should be taken in order to establish European norms or a uniform technical specification taking into account and supporting environmental aspects, yet at the same time avoiding negative effects of fixing too specific criteria. An example of such a specification is pro-ecologic labeling according to the regulations binding in EU. Businesses that make purchases can encourage firms to take up a more active attitude towards environmental protection by stopping to refuse offers for goods including repaired components or recycled materials, although they comply with technical requirements defined in the documents related to procurement”.
Legal basis concerning public procurement are made of EU Directives 2004/18/EC2 and 2004/17/EC3, which provide for a possibility to consider both environmental aspects as well as the issues of energy efficiency in the procurement. Taking advantage of a high purchase power possessed by public institutions ( that amounts to as much as 16% of GNP in EU) as well as choosing products and services that are pro-ecologically conditioned, these institutions can contribute greatly to sustainable development. Buying environmentally friendly products and services is also giving a good example to other users functioning in the market. “Green orders” can significantly encourage industry to develop environmentally friendly technologies. It should also be stressed that for both parties operating in this market (producer and orderer) development of environmentally concerned technologies generates not only ecologic but financial advantages well.
In January 2007 the National Agency for Energy Respectability (KAPE) elaborated propositions concerning environmental criteria possible to use when formulating a specification for the needs of public procurement.
1
Act of 29.01.2004. Public procurement law (Journal of Law 2004 no 19, i.177, uniform text of 20.11.2007 – Journal of Law 2007 no 223, i.1655 with further amendments)
2 Directive 2004/18/EC of European Parliament and the European Council of 31.03.2004 concerning
coordination of the procedures of public procurement for building works, supplies and services.
3
Directive 2004/17/EC of European Parliament and the European Council of 31.03.2004 coordinating bidding procedures of businesses running their activities in the area of water economy, energy, transport and post services.
Archives of Waste Management and Environmental Protection, vol. 12 issue 2 (2010) 45
2. Environmental criteria for building components
According to the requirements of the Directive a business unit making a purchase can at its own discretion define criteria of offer qualification, if they are in compliance with the EU treaty, rules binding in EU and if they are objective, clear and do not contain any signs of discrimination of particular groups of suppliers. European Tribunal of Justice provides for the importance of ecological (environmental) criteria of not more than 45% of the total evaluation of the offer [3]. This leads to the conclusion that, it is required that the price of an offer processing/completion could have a significant influence on the offer qualification. In the guide on public procurement management there is also a provision stating, that (quotation): “External costs, such as negative environmental impact, are not usually taken into account due to the difficult character and lack of analytical methodology” [6].
Environmental criteria for components of a building suggested by KAPE are divided into compulsory and additional. It is expected that a supplier meets all the compulsory criteria, though the offer assessment sheet contains a rubric concerning compliance with those requirements. For additional criteria there are points granted for every “beyond standard” technical solution. For example, in case of windows, a basic criterion is the guarantee period of at least 5 years and the additional concerns a period over 5 years, for which 10 points are granted [5].
The basic objective of Green Public Procurement (GPP) is first of all to increase efficiency of energy use in sectors of the national economy. It is expected that achievement of the above goal will result in the possibly greatest effect of reducing energy use and lowering environmental impact [6].
Owing to the above, the researchers who have suggested environmental criteria for components of a building GPP first of all bore in mind energy economy of the building elements (for this, the biggest number of points of all the additional criteria is granted), though not only, because the other criteria are: product durability, as it was mentioned before, and noise absorption (for example of windows) or noise emission in case of a building ventilation. Referring to the provision mentioned above, that “a business unit making a purchase can freely define criteria of the offer qualification”, we come to the conclusion , that these suggestions are one of the many that can be defined in the procurement procedure. However, in the opinion of the author, taking into account the number of variables (criteria), it would be advisable to make another criterion in order to decrease environmental impact, namely Life Cycle Assessment – LCA. Application of this instrument is justified by the fact of subjecting the whole life of a product to the analysis – “from cradle to cradle” - that means from collecting resources from environment, through the phase of production, distribution and use until its recycling and recovery. The question: which window (as a building element) is more environmentally friendly, the one made of plastic or the one made of wood (assuming identical physical parameters such as: heat thermal conductivity coefficient U, shading factor b, degree of complete energy transmittance g, etc.? can justify the suggestion of applying this instrument (LCA) also with respect to the above-mentioned component of a building. The answer to this question is a result of a correctly made LCA analysis. The situation is similar in the GPP offer assessment sheet for external building partitions. Lack of LCA analysis, especially thermal
insulating and construction materials does not guarantee making environmentally “optimum” choices [1].
It is difficult to approve of the statement (mentioned above), that “external costs, such as negative environmental impact, are not usually taking into account due to the difficult character and lack of analytical methodology” because the methodology related to life cycle assessment has been normalized and described in the norm PN-EN ISO 14040:20094 and PN-EN ISO 14044:20095. It is definitely a demanding analysis and difficult to make. Green public orders are among the basic instruments promoting implementation of the Integrated Product Policy (IPP) which is an initiative launched by the European Commission aiming at a close relation of a product policy broadly understood with environmental protection, by reference to , among other things, one of the basic five rules, namely:” thinking in life cycle category”.
Another aspect for application of LCA analysis in Green Public Procurement is the suggestion (made by the authors of environmental criteria) of using eco-labeling as one of the criteria of procurement object assessment. Environmental declarations (III type) are approved of by independent units. The information they contain are based on the results of LCA, whereas the rules of entering them into the document are uniform and normalized6. Furthermore, applying LCA throughout the whole process of Green Public Procurement is also justified by the fact that the authors of environmental criteria pay attention to the necessity of using Life Cycle Cost –LCC analysis for the procurement assessment, which is a similar instrument in product Life Cycle management. LCC analysis is first of all to make an easier decision when choosing an object of the procurement, which will guarantee that the choice will be the most economically advantageous offer in the whole life cycle, not necessarily the cheapest offer, though.
3.
Conclusion
Analysis of the proposal concerning environmental criteria for components of a building in green public procurement calls for a discussion on the fact that LCA analysis is missing in the criteria suggested. The environmental criteria for components of a building are limited only to the criteria related to energy efficiency on the maintenance and operation stage after the components have been placed in the structure of the building. The environmental impact, which is quite significant, was omitted on the stage of production and utilization of these components [1]. Only when a business unit making a purchase will demand an environmental declaration (III type), this aspect will be taken into account. It should be
4
PN-EN ISO 14040:2009 Environmental management - Life cycle assessment -Principles and framework
5
PN-EN ISO 14044:2009 Environmental management - Life cycle assessment – Requirements and guidelines,
6
PN-EN ISO 14025:2009 - Environmental labels and declarations – Type III environmental declarations – Principles and procedures.
Archives of Waste Management and Environmental Protection, vol. 12 issue 2 (2010) 47 stressed, that LCA analysis of building materials leads to the conclusion that the stage of a building object use and operation has the biggest environmental impact due to the time of operation which is as long as 100 years, although the other stages of the building life cycle are also important, namely: resource soliciting, material production and disposal (recovery and recycling) [2].
Kowalski-Paszko states that, apart from the above issues, there is also a problem of reaching the expected level of public green procurement share in the whole size of public orders. In 2005 this share amounted to only 4-6% of the public procurement in Poland. Assuming that on a local level this share is to reach 20% until 2010 and until 2020 as much as 50%, the figure presented for 2005 shows that green procurement has a very little share in the whole of public procurement in Poland [4].
Reference
[1] Adamczyk J., Dylewski R., Optymalizacja ekonomiczno-środowiskowa budynku na przykładzie zewnętrznej przegrody budowlanej. Przegląd Budowlany 1/2009
[2] Adamczyk J., Wykorzystanie analizy LCA do oceny środowiskowej budynku. Praca doktorska, Zielona Góra 2006
[3] Directive 2004/18/EC of European Parliament and the European Council of 31.03.2004 concerning coordination of the procedures of public procurement for building works, supplies and services
[4] Kowalski-Paszko S., Zielone zamówienia publiczne. Przetargi Publiczne, 4/2009 [5] Kryteria środowiskowe dla produktów zużywających energię. Moduł – Komponenty
budynków. Krajowa Agencja Poszanowania Energii S.A., Internet: www.kape.gov.pl [6] Zielone Zamówienia i Ochrona Środowiska. Poradnik dot. Zamówień i zakupów
urządzeń zużywających energię, oświetlenia i zielonej energii z uwzględnieniem kryteriów efektywności energetycznej i kryteriów środowiskowych. Moduł ogólny. Wyd. KAPE, styczeń 2007, Internet: www.kape.gov.pl
