The public sector in Norway purchases products and services for more then 300 billion NOK per year.This purchasing power can play an important role in leveraging the market share of environmentallysound products by increasing the level of environmental requirements in public contracts.Environmental considerations in public procurement have been on the international agenda sincethe 1992 conference in Rio, and the OECD, the EU and the Nordic Council of Ministers have alsoplaced Green Public Procurement (GPP) on their agendas. Together with statements from the 2002World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, they all underline GPP as a tool formaking a shift to more sustainable production and consumption practices.In Norway, the Government launched a Norwegian Action Plan on Environmental and SocialResponsibility in Public Procurement in 2007. The aim of the plan was to encourage the public sectorto demand environmentally sound products and services. However, several previous studies thathave assessed the status of GPP show that, despite efforts to promote environmental considerations,there is a long way to go before these are fully integrated into public procurement practiceThe aim of this study was to produce information about how widespread the use of environmentalcriteria are in Norway, and to identify what drivers and barriers are seen to influence the GPP status.Based on experiences from other studies, the method design chosen was an analysis of tenderdocuments complemented by case studies with interviews. Using both methods provided a way ofbalancing the results so as to get the most objective status scores on GPP together with moredetailed answers on perceived drivers and barriers.The results revealed that almost 60% of all tender documents included some kind of environmentalcriteria, but 1/3 of these were so unclear that it was doubtful as to whether or not they would resultin any green procurement. Of the product groups that were in focus, the one that included paper andprint was by far the “greenest” of the groups, with the others both containing less GPP and moreunclear criteria. Compared to other studies this puts Norway at the same level as Sweden, and showsa slight improvement in total GPP compared to previous assessments. Still, taking the high amount ofunclear criteria into account may lower the overall GPP score.The interview results indicated that lack of knowledge, focus on economic considerations andproduct functionality, lack of support and management focus and work pressure were the five mainbarriers preventing GPP. Increased co-operation, increased focus from management, simplification ofcriteria and more available products with environmental labels were identified as drivers. The driversand barriers identified correspond to those of previous studies, with some new finding such asidentifying the lack of product specific knowledge, where ...
