Last January, the Big Buyers Working Together project kicked off its Community of Practice focusing on the public procurement of vehicles used for the delivery of environmental services, particularly street cleansing and waste collection. The group will have a second meeting on 24 April during the first annual event of the Big Buyers Working Together project. Relevant stakeholders interested in the work of the group, are welcome to join the event in Brussels.

The needs assessment that helped shape this Community of Practice showed that this group would like to expand the availability of vehicles, discuss the best tactics to facilitate the procurement of electric and non-diesel vehicles, explore whether retrofitting is a feasible alternative and look at other potential sources of fuel in case of a limited charging infrastructure.

Within this context, this group will seek to engage the market to gain a better understanding of what suppliers can provide, what technologies are available and what the limitations of these technologies are. The kick off meeting also showed that the participants are interested in developing and testing procurement strategies and documents through a series of pilots, as well as potentially developing a joint declaration that expresses the combined demand needs.

In the previous edition of the European Commission’s Big Buyers Initiative there was also a working group on Heavy-Duty Electric Vehicle. During the kick-off meeting participants noted that in the current iteration it would be good to have a stronger focus on exploring the possibilities of hydrogen as a fuel, as well as ensuring that the vehicles can operate consistently in any climate and in any terrain – cities with a lot of slopes require more powerful vehicles.

The kick-off meeting featured representatives from Barcelona City Council (Spain), the City of Oslo (Norway), the City of Cologne (Germany), the City of Amsterdam (Netherlands), the City of Porto (Portugal), the City of Gothenburg (Sweden), the City of Lisbon (Portugal) and the City of Haarlem (Netherlands)

More information on this Community of Practice can be found on the European Commission’s Public Buyers Community, a digital platform for public procurers. Participants interested in joining the CoP are encouraged to join the annual event in Brussels on 24 April and/or report their interest in the work of the Community by sending an email to Big Buyers Working Together Secretariat, at big.buyers@eurocities.eu. The CoP on HDEV is one of the four CoP’s coordinated by ICLEI Europe. Eurocities also coordinates four, while BME coordinates two.