Seville, Spain, 20 May 2018: In advance of the second Ad-Hoc Working Group (AHWG2) meeting, to be held as a webinar on 29 and 30 May, 2018, the second criteria proposals for Green Public Procurement (GPP) for Data Centres have been published on the Joint Research Centre (JRC) Product Bureau website, the EU JRC announced via a Press communiqué.

According to the JRC, the GPP criteria will be based on the requirements addressed in EU Communication COM (2008) 400, ‘Public Procurement for a better Environment’. The purpose of this project is to develop the EU GPP criteria to have updated, clear and ambitious environmental criteria, based on a lifecycle approach and a scientific evidence base, the communiqué said. Several environmental, safety, technical and functional aspects will be considered, the communiqué further said.

According to the JRC, continuous wide consultation is foreseen with stakeholders such as manufacturers, supply chain industry, consumer organisations, NGOs and procurers, amongst others. The idea is to engage these stakeholders to discuss the topic and develop a consensus, the communiqué said. Two types of criteria will be proposed: core criteria and comprehensive criteria, where core criteria are those suitable for any contracting authority across the Member States and address the key environmental impacts, while comprehensive criteria are developed for those who wish to purchase the best environmental products available on the market, the communiqué further said.

The communiqué said that stakeholder involvement is a crucial part of the process and anyone who wishes to be involved in the consultation process can register as a stakeholder through the EU JRC website: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en.