# Analysis of Green Public Procurement of Works by Spanish Public Universities
## 5 Discussion  
In the study sample, 19.3% of the Spanish public universities use environmental criteria when contracting construction projects. This value is lower than the 40% average in the EU27 in 2012 as defined by [PERSON] et al. (2017); and is also lower than a recent study made in Spain from a sample of a hundred projects and in which 35% included environmental criteria ([PERSON] et al., 2012). However, the percentage is equal to a study performed by [PERSON] et al. with tendered works between 2012 and 2013 in Italy ([PERSON] et al., 2014), where 19% of the procedures included green specifications as award criteria; and similar to another study conducted in Italy in 2010, also by [PERSON] et al. (2014), with 23% of procedures. There are some explanations for these differences. Firstly, there is a clear difference between Mediterranean countries and the 'Green 7' (Sweden, Germany, Austria, Denmark, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Finland) ([PERSON] et al., 2012; [PERSON] et al., 2012). Secondly, and in agreement with [PERSON] et al. (2012) and [PERSON] et al. (2013), there is still a long way to go to improve the environmental dimension within university procurement. Thirdly, and as previously indicated by [PERSON] et al. (2014), results obtained from the analysis of the call for tenders are more conservative than the results obtained by surveys of public administration managers. Table 3 shows the description of the environmental criteria used in the contracts in the sample. All the criteria are assessed with value judgment criteria and the criterion most often used is 'energy efficiency and sustainability improvements'. This criterion is aligned to the main criteria indicated by the European Commission guide on GPP (2013) and is in concordance with the research of [PERSON] et al. (2014) in Italy (in this case, the main criterion was energy performance). This criterion reflects the numbers construction projects tendered by Spanish public universities (mainly buildings, building installations, and space conditioning for parking or sports annexes). Enhanced aspects, as defined by Commission European Guides on GPP (2013); (2013) and/or described in previous research (2013; 2014), such as life cycle assessment (LCA), or carbon footprint (CF), do not appear in the environmental criteria for working contracts, even if there are references within other criteria, such as the LCA, or characteristics of the materials used, both in buildings and civil engineering works. Environmental plans (EPs) or environmental action plans continue as one of the main environmental criteria and, in the same way as in the study of [PERSON] et al. (2012), a standardization and/or a guide for the elaboration of the EP is necessary. Several items are repeatedly integrated into EPs, such as preventive and corrective project measures, the use of recycled and reused materials, and the environmental procedures of the tendering company, promoting the relationship with the EMS, ISO 14001, or equivalent certification systems used by the company. EMS, ISO 14001, or similar certification systems, are not used directly as award criteria, in compliance with European directives (2013); (2013) and Spanish legislation (2013; 2014; 2015), but are used as a part  
Figure 4: Number of tenders according to environmental criteria weighting by contract size (in euros). of other criteria, or for coordinating environmental measures for working with the environmental systems of companies (Table 3), since they are essential for encouraging good environmental practices in companies and achieving a sustainable construction systems [7]. As mentioned above, the intrinsic characteristics of the universities mean that public works belong mainly to the building subsector--but the percentage of environmental criteria in this subsector is only slightly higher than the civil engineering subsector, so it can be aligned with previous research where it was affirmed that the use of environmental criteria is more common in civil engineering works than in building works [8].