UK: The World Economic Forum and the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA), in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), have released a Mission Possible Partnership Report which identifies the nations that are prioritising green public procurement. These are the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, the UK, and select US states. The report titled ‘Low-Carbon Concrete and Construction - A Review of Green Public Procurement Programmes’ identifies a framework for how these six countries are demonstrating leadership in green public procurement of concrete and construction.

The first component of the framework is the foundation, which includes establishing standards for reporting emissions, databases and tools for tracking emissions and establishes baselines. The second part of the framework, procurement polices, builds upon and reinforces the foundation by setting policies that require environmental disclosures, mandate carbon limits, and incentivise low-carbon design, and use of low-carbon materials.

Approximately 7% of global carbon emissions come from cement, and about half of the cement used globally is procured by the public sector. Governments also spend US$11tn/yr on procurement, about 12% of global gross domestic product (GDP) and regulate the construction industry via building codes. Therefore, governments play a critical role in driving demand to decarbonise the concrete and construction sector to achieve net zero goals.

Matt Rogers, the chief executive officer of the Mission Possible Project said “The demand signals in the market for green industrial products are among the most important opportunities to accelerate the path to net zero across industrial sectors. For material sectors like cement and concrete, government procurement practices will play an especially important role. This report summarises the current best practices in government procurement for green cement across multiple markets. Insights like these provide the government procurement professionals practical tools and technical insights that they can use today to create demand-pull for the most innovative low carbon cement and concrete offerings in the market.”