Green Procurements in Sweden

Please note: this report is for the Swedish market and is in Swedish.

Environmental requirements in tenders are a hot topic. In this report we examine how common it is for public bodies to require environmental management systems in their tenders. The data is based on information in all procurement documents – an analysis never done before. Read the report to find out which bodies set requirements, which don’t, and when the requirements are set.

Environmental requirements in fewer than half of public tenders

Just under half of public tenders require the supplier to have an environmental management system. This is shown in a new report from AI company Tendium.

In 2022, 47 per cent of public tenders required an environmental management system. Housing companies and publicly owned companies set this requirement more often, while municipalities and regions were close to the overall average. Central government agencies set the requirement least often, in just 29 per cent of tenders.

The figures come from Tendium’s new report Green Procurement?. Tendium is a company that uses AI to make public procurement more efficient. The report is based on data from hundreds of thousands of procurement documents made accessible by Tendium using AI.

Wide variation in how often requirements are set

The report also shows wide variation in how often contracting authorities require environmental management systems. Many public bodies never set the requirement in 2022, and almost as many set it in every single tender. These were mainly small organisations with between one and five tenders per year.

Among the ten largest contracting authorities the variation was also large – a full 70 percentage points. Sweden’s largest contracting authority by number of tenders per year, the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket), required an environmental management system in only 9 per cent of its tenders.

Rural municipalities less often require environmental management systems. Commuter municipalities and towns require them in just over half of their tenders, with the exception of larger cities at 45 per cent. Rural municipalities, on the other hand, have a considerably lower share of tenders with this requirement, at 35–36 per cent.

Environmental management system requirements were more often set in tenders for goods and services with a direct environmental impact. Among the goods and services with the lowest share of such requirements were education and healthcare.

Review of the national procurement strategy under way

The government is currently reviewing the national procurement strategy and the ordinance on environmental management in central government agencies. The review follows a report from the Swedish National Audit Office (Riksrevisionen), which criticised the environmental considerations in central government procurement.

“Public procurement has long suffered from a lack of transparency and high-quality data. With this report we hope to give legislators, public bodies, opinion leaders and suppliers to the public sector a clear picture of the current situation,” says Hannes Dernehl, CEO of Tendium.

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