Infrastructure projects account for a large portion of the world’s CO2 emissions. One way to reduce the carbon impact is to implement sustainability requirements in the procurement process. The research project Implementation of Procurement Requirements for Sustainable Collaboration in Infrastructure (Impres) aims to study how this can be done most effectively.
“It is easy to formulate and state high requirements in the procurement phase, but there is a problem that they are not always fulfilled in practice and that the follow-up is lacking,” says Anna Kadefors, Professor at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and Research Coordinator for the project.
In the building sector today it is more or less standard to require sustainability assessment schemes to ensure that construction projects meet high environmental standards. Similar schemes also have the potential to be used in the procurement process in infrastructure projects, as a basis for establishing and meeting targets, such as reduced climate impact.