# Green Public Procurement for Accelerating the Transition towards Sustainable Freight Transport
## 5 Discussion  
As findings from the surveys indicate, a large proportion of Norwegian municipalities are already working with green public procurement (GPP). Today's practices of GPP involving freight services have been presented above and the results indicate potential for further refining of the practices. Part two of our research question is <<how should GPP practices be developed further to accelerate sustainability transitions in freight transport? This section starts with a brief overview of the most important issues recognised through the analyses as a basis for the following discussion, which also relates to other studies within the same field. According to the results, factors such as political decisions, strategies, requirements, capacity/budget, competence, and methods for monitoring/follow-up are the most prominent issues in public procurements of goods and services for accelerating the transition towards a more sustainable freight transport. These issues are important for both public procurers and freight service providers, but in different ways. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l l} \hline \hline
**FSP** & **Experience with Public Procurement** & **Goal** \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{A} & Experience a growing interest for FSP & \multirow{4}{*}{Zero emission city logistics in 2026} \\  & opinion/knowledge regarding & & \\  & requirements. Poor evaluation and & & \\  & monitoring of requirements. & & \\  & PP is time-consuming; therefore, they & & \\  & concentrate on the private market. & & \\  & Experience a growing interest for FSP & & \\  & opinion/knowledge regarding & & \\  & requirements. Poor evaluation and & & \\  & monitoring of requirements. & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 11: Findings from interviews with freight service providers. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l l l} \hline \hline
**How Do You Consider the Following Statements** & \multirow{4}{*}{20\%} & \multirow{4}{*}{20\%} & \multirow{4}{*}{20\%} & \multirow{4}{*}{20\%} & \multirow{4}{*}{20\%} \\  & & & & & \\  & & &  
Political decisions and strategies are identified as the most prominent reasons for municipalities to work with GPP in this sample. However, there are differences between the larger and smaller municipalities, where the smaller tend to be lagging behind regarding the implementation of GPP. One reason for not implementing the GPP in smaller municipalities could be related to the lack of competence and personal interest. Statements from interviews point to personal interest as often being essential when prioritizing different tasks if public procurements is one of several responsibilities of the respondent. In contrast, the larger municipalities can work with GPP in a more professional way, since they often have designated procurement departments, in line with studies where professionalism and knowledge are mentioned as success criteria in GPP [28]. It is worth noting that a large administration is not mandatory to succeed with GPP. One possibility for empowering the smaller municipalities and enhancing their involvement in GPP could be to increase their access to resources or more efficient use of existing resources, e.g., through inter-municipal collaboration in procurement processes. Some of the municipalities already use networks on a local and/or regional level as a source for acquiring information about low emission solutions and delivery alternatives. Enhanced collaboration through such networks could help smaller municipalities to increase their competency for implementation of GPP. As understood in [16; 29], enhancing knowledge through transfer it between actors is important, especially in smaller municipalities. Easy access to or already acquired competence about GPP probably facilitates its inclusion in daily routines. Capacity can also be related to access of vehicles running on alternative fuels. This is mentioned by both freight service providers and small municipalities.