SAPIENS Network Coordinator Professor Roberto Caranta as well as professor Steve Schooner, from our partner organization George Washington University, participated in the 2021 Annual Conference Society for Benefit-Cost analysis.

Sustainability is one of the new criteria in government purchasing, referred to as Green Public Procurement (or GPP). Sustainable procurement plays a crucial role in the U.S. Federal Acquisition Regulation where 95% of federal contracts should make use of energy-efficient products and the E.U. Public Procurement Directive of 2014. To select the most advantageous tender and guarantee equal treatment of suppliers, the government needs to assess sustainability objectively.

While indirect measures to evaluate a policy’s impact on human life exist, such as QUALY (quality-adjusted life year) or DALY (disability-adjusted life year), they are not tailored towards green public procurement and omit important aspects of sustainability in government purchasing. The panelists discussed different methods, including the limitations of stated preference studies, the difference between willingness to pay and accept, and procurement-specific measures such as the consideration of life-cycle costing, green labels, sustainability weighting, and emission calculators. The panelists’ mixed backgrounds—economists, legal scholars, and practitioners—provided diverse and nuanced perspectives on how to measure sustainability.

Watch the entire panel below!

Full Panel

• Moderator: Désirée Klingler, PhD Candidate in Law at the University of St. Gallen
• Panelist: Steve Schooner, Professor of Public Procurement Law at George Washington University
• Panelist: Roberto Caranta, Professor of Administrative Law at the University of Turin
• Panelist: Marc Steiner, Judge at the Swiss Federal Administrative Court