Californian High Speed Rail joins Power of Procurement
On Wednesday the 12th of September, during the successful Buy Clean affiliate event of the Global Climate Action Summit, the California High Speed Rail and Rijkswaterstaat (the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management) announced their collaboration within the EU INTERREG NWE Power of Procurement (PoP) project.
The PoP project’s scope and ambition attracted the California High Speed Rail since the State of California is already familiar with sustainable procurement. For example, they are already evaluating proposals for major infrastructure projects based on embodied carbon for specific materials.
Rijkswaterstaat and Californian High-Speed Rail (Photo by Teresa O’Brien)
Reducing CO2 emissions via procurement
The aim of the PoP project is to reduce CO2 emissions by innovating procurement processes. Procurement is a powerful tool for driving markets towards more sustainable production processes and creating markets for sustainable goods, services and infrastructure. 30% of the EU’s government spending and 16% of its GDP, about €1.8 trillion annually, is invested through procurement.
PoP brings together principal buyers, knowledge institutions, innovative contractors and procurement experts to implement and upscale procurement methods such as the CO2 Performance Ladder, Dubocalc and SAVi. More harmonised low-carbon procurement will provide more certainty to the market to invest in, and scale up the use of low-carbon solutions across transnational supply chains. It will develop, implement and mainstream low-carbon procurement approaches by the principal buyers, accelerating the investment in green infrastructure over grey infrastructure.
Besides Rijkswaterstaat and the Californian High Speed Railway, PoP currently has the following partners: the Dutch rail operator ProRail, UK Environment Agency, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, SKAO of the CO2 Performance Ladder and IISD, and is in conversations with many other large procuring organisations in infrastructure across Europe.
The Power of Procurement project is a great opportunity for exchanging lessons learned from leaders in the EU.
– Margareth Cederoth, California High-Speed Rail
We are really pleased with the current partners. However, much more needs to be done and we need many more cities, states, countries and companies to showcase their leadership in this area.
– Sanne van der Mijl, Rijkswaterstaat
Impact of this transnational collaboration
More aligned low-carbon procurement provides more certainty and incentives for the market to invest in, and scale the use of low-carbon solutions. PoP will facilitate the development of collaborative business models along transnational supply chains to develop economies of scale for low-carbon solutions. Power of Procurement aims to reach a CO2 reduction of 180 MT through public procurement in 10 years with 50% of infrastructure projects procured with low-carbon methods.
