Green Public Procurement of passenger cars

© ifeu - Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung Heidelberg gGmbH

Background

Road transport is a key contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and pollution in cities, as well as to resource consumption. Reductions are urgently needed here. Switching from passenger cars to means of transport with a lower environmental impact (such as two-wheelers, pedelecs, public transport, etc.) as well as passenger cars with alternative drives offer an opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to the reduction of local air pollution.

In Germany, the public sector purchases more than 20,000 vehicles per year (excluding public transport and municipal services such as waste disposal). This volume of finance and demand justifies a special responsibility of the public sector for environmentally compatible procurement in this area.

Scope and results of the project

In this project, ifeu developed solution approaches for important core areas of green public procurement of passenger cars with the aim of broad applicability. For this purpose, suitable and easy-to-use instruments for the procurement process were developed with the participation of important users and stakeholders, with the aim of enabling their binding use in as many procurement agencies as possible. The focus of the project was on the following elements:

• Derivation of environmental requirements that can be adopted as minimum requirements and award criteria in the tendering process for passenger cars
• Development of an online tool to raise awareness and provide information on alternatives to purchasing cars and on the procurement of cars with alternative drive systems. The starting points of the tool in the procurement process are the needs assessment and the tendering process.
• Revision and further development of a life cycle cost calculation tool. This tool is an important basis for the tender evaluation. In the life cycle cost calculation, the external environmental costs are taken into account in the economic evaluation of the bids received, in addition to the purchase and operating costs of the vehicles.

The results and tools were developed in close cooperation with the federal states of Berlin, Brandenburg and Hessen and are publicly available.