Case Study Spotlight: Advancing Public Procurement Policy

Governments have enormous power to drive decarbonization and climate resiliency across the larger economy, as well as to save money for taxpayers, using their authority to set procurement rules. Public-sector buyers have long collected non-contract-specific information from vendors, such as the sufficiency of their financial resources and their history of legal compliance. Today, new types of organization-wide data is being collected from large suppliers: information on greenhouse gas emissions, climate-related financial risks, and strategies for transitioning to low pollution business models. As sophisticated buyers of products and services with large budgets, collecting this information is critical to maintaining resilient supply chains and managing climate-related financial risks and other sustainability threats. Ceres, a Boston-based nonprofit advocacy organization, has led several sustainable procurement policy initiatives at both the federal and state levels demonstrating that sustainable procurement policy saves money for taxpayers, improves program delivery, and helps suppliers build climate resilience and capture the economic opportunities associated with the energy transition. State governments have an opportunity to advance these initiatives to implement their own sustainable procurement policies. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts provides an excellent case study of a state agency operating at the forefront of climate-related procurement policy. Its recent efforts to gather suppliers’ climate information, with the goal of partnering with suppliers on strengthening climate resiliency and accelerating decarbonization, serve as a national model of using data collection and analysis to advance sustainable procurement policy. Click here to read the full case study.*

The Ceres / MA OSD case study was submitted to the SPLC Leadership Awards program. Visit the SPLC website for more information on the Leadership Awards Program.

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