The Green Energy Procurement Policy and its Consequences: A Green Light to make Business Turn Smarter

Abstract

Concepts such as Sustainable Development and Green Procurement are increasingly present today. Green Procurement has a great overall importance in reducing environmental impacts regarding consumer goods and services and, consequently, the way of living in society as well as the whole world, in a Sustainable Development perspective. The general framework of the study focuses on the United Nations and the European Union‘s Green Procurement policy that has consequences on the Portuguese Energy Policy and affects purchases and businesses. The main concepts to develop are the Sustainability, the Sustainable Development and the Green Procurement. Green Procurement must be, implemented in a holistic way organizations and be in consumers concerns, by including environmental and social considerations into its acquisition practices. Lacroix (2011) defines Green Procurement by the following way: Green procurement is the purchasing of products or services which have a lower impact on the environment over their whole life cycle than the standard equivalent. (P. 2) The main objective of the study is to identify the current policies of green procurement policies in the UN, EU and in Portugal and, consequently, in organizations, and to explore the issues that may affect the people‘s behavior and business and activity.