Online tools for SMEs and public sector to better adopt renewable energy sources

Green public procurement (GPP) is a system where public sector organisations use their purchasing power to choose environmentally friendly goods, services and works that can greatly contribute to sustainable consumption and production. GPP will play a key role in the EU’s efforts to become a more resource-efficient economy.

Enter the EU-funded XPRESS project that is supporting public procurement to facilitate cooperation between SMEs and the public sector for RES adoption across the EU. To achieve its goal, the project has launched a search engine enabling SMEs to access tenders related to RESs and a database containing previous RES calls for tenders intended for public authorities keen on adopting RES technologies through GPP.

One-stop shop for all things RES

The search engine enables “users to find the most recent calls for tenders published on Tenders Electronic Daily (TED), according to a tailored set of CPV codes (contract topics), keywords, deadline, country and type of document,” according to a news item on the ‘Energy Global’ website. The database encourages “public buyers to implement Green Public Procurement with a set of more than 3900 SME-friendly tenders embracing RES published from 2016 to 2018, stored in an online database on [the] XPRESS platform.” All old tenders can be searched based on keywords, common procurement vocabulary code, budget range, year and country.