Evan Matsuda
91 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 224
Federal procurement has an important role to play in mitigating and adapting to climate change. The massive scale of the government’s purchasing power—more than $600 billion in Fiscal Year 2022—puts the federal government in a unique position to mitigate anthropogenic climate change by purchasing and creating markets for products and services with lower greenhouse gas emissions. The Biden Administration has recognized the potential climate impact of federal procurement, but policy direction alone will fail to curb anthropogenic contributions to rising global temperatures without specific and mandatory implementation schemes.
To ensure prioritization of low emissions solutions, the government must overcome the temptations of low up-front purchase prices and internalize the less obvious costs associated with greenhouse gas emissions. Two methodologies have developed which, when combined, can do exactly that: (1) greenhouse gas accounting and (2) the social cost of greenhouse gases (“SCGHG”). First, greenhouse gas accounting has developed for tracking and reporting firms’ greenhouse gas emissions, and it can be used by prospective offerors to estimate the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with their government contract proposals. Second, the SC-GHG metric quantifies the cost to society, in dollars, of one metric ton of greenhouse gas emissions. If prospective offerors use greenhouse gas accounting methodologies to estimate the emissions associated with their proposals, purchasing agencies can then apply the SC-GHG metric to those estimates to quantify—and therefore compare—the expected social cost of greenhouse gas emissions of each proposal.
This Note advocates for wielding the federal government’s purchasing power to mitigate climate change by accounting for the social cost of greenhouse gases at four key stages of the federal procurement process: (1) acquisition planning, (2) solicitation, (3) evaluation, and (4) quality assurance. To prevent potential burdens on low-value transactions with smaller potential impacts on climate change, this Note further suggests limiting mandatory incorporation of the social cost of greenhouse gases to high-value contracts above a specified dollar threshold.
