Finland

Current national procurement legislation/standards from the project-relevant fields

• IT - no
• household appliances - no
• lighting - no
• green power - no
• vehicles - no
• building components - no
• other (that could serve as a relevant example) - no
• general/universal - no

There is a law concerning public procurement in Finland.
The national legislation on public procurement is being processed in the Finnish Parliament (spring 2006) as the implementation measure of the EU Directives on Public Procurement.

There are no specific standards concerning the listed or other product groups.

Current national practice

There is no obligation for green purchasing in Finland. However, the possibility to use envi-ronmental aspects as award criteria has been explicitly expressed in ‘The Regulation on State Purchasing’ of 1993. The Waste Act of the same year poses an obligation that authorities must ensure that the products they use are recyclable or made of recycled material.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) has published recommendations on energy efficiency in public procurement. The recommendations include a list of factors that can be taken into consideration, besides the price, when criteria for procurement are set. These include also the energy costs during the life-cycle as well as environmental impacts that influence the total costs positively.

Public sector actors are encouraged to participate in projects for launching new technology and to take into consideration the commitment of energy suppliers to contribute to energy efficiency.
There are recommendations to purchase office equipment fulfilling the Energy Star criteria. The household appliances to be purchased should be class A and the lamps be CFLs.

There are no commonly known practices or recommendations concerning energy and envi-ronmental aspects in the procurement processes in the private sector.

Recognised barriers

Finland follows the development of the legislation within the EU and implements it accordingly. The obstacles for successful implementation of the recommended criteria in procurement activities of the public bodies are both on the strategic and implementation level. Many organisations have not included energy efficiency as procurement criteria even though most of them have it in the environmental management system.
The recommendations of the Ministry of Trade and Industry are not commonly known or ap-plied in more than half of the Finnish municipalities.

The attitudes among the procurement people in the public sector are positive towards the use of environmental criteria. The main obstacle for following this principle is that there is not sufficiently information and helping tools available to support the setting of the appropriate criteria without too much extra work for the limited personnel in the organisations.
Better co-operation between the different sectors of the organisations and higher motivation of the people in charge together with information on good practices would improve the cir-cumstances.

Opportunities

The Ministry of Trade and Industry has concluded voluntary Energy Conservation Agreements with public and private sector actors covering most of the end-use of energy in Finland. The agreements with the public sector parties include procurement criteria emphasising high energy efficiency.
As the agreement system is now (in 2006) being revised the requirements concerning energy efficiency will be more specific and get more weight.

A few Finnish municipalities explored the supply of green products and studied the link be-tween purchasing and environmental loads already at the end of the 1980’s. The report ‘State material purchasing and environment’ drawn up by a working party set up by the
Ministry of the Environment in 1992 included 53 proposals but resulted in no further action. After this, GPP attracted more interest again in 1998 when the Government program stated that environmental considerations should be considered in public purchasing. Finland pro-duced reports on the state of GPP and the development of an internet-based information-system, www.hymonet.com, began. Hymonet has been in use since the summer of 2001 and it includes product-specific information and guidelines for over 60 different product groups and product-specific environmental questions in attachments that can be used with tender calls.