When we think of tools to address climate change, public procurement is not frequently  the first thing that comes to mind. However, the public sector represents an enormous share of buying power within the overall economy, and demand from the public sector can help to drive the changes we wish to see to in order to shift toward cleaner technologies and more resilient communities. To address these challenges, the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact hosted a Regional Climate Action Plan implementation workshop on the power of procurement for low-carbon, resilient communities.

This workshop served to open a dialogue between resilience and procurement teams, increasing collaboration in order to more fully utilize procurement processes as a tool to ensure public sector investments incorporate resilience goals and principles.

Attendees left this workshop with:

• Shared lessons learned and deeper understanding of best practices for innovative procurement strategies that support resilience objectives.
• Opportunities to evaluate bids using alternative evaluation methods to fully capture a wider suite of societal, environmental, and economic costs and benefits.
• Deeper understanding of ways in which local governments may begin to track resilience investments and other metrics to monitor progress.

This workshop continued the Compact’s series of workshops designed to advance the implementation of the Regional Climate Action Plan. It focuses specifically on the following recommendations:

• Establish a fuel-efficient municipal vehicle fleet to encourage government fleets to maximize miles per gallon (MPG) fuel efficiency for all non-specialty vehicle procurement.
• Promote community use of electric vehicles (EV).
• Advance regional resilience infrastructure standards.
• Ensure investments reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase the resilience of the transportation system to extreme weather and climate impacts.

Questions? Contact Lauren Ordway, Senior Program Officer, Institute for Sustainable Communities at lordway@sustain.org.