The Innovation Procurement Task Force (IPTF), is an ongoing collaborative initiative that promotes sustainability, resilience, and innovation across its member states. This task force aims to support procurement in innovative areas such as the circular economy, green mobility, and healthcare. By bringing together public bodies, businesses, and organisations, IPTF leverages collective expertise to improve progress but also to create more sustainable and resilient communities. Initially established by four EU-funded projects- PROCEDIN, BUILD, Health InnoFacilitator, and InnoBuyer- the IPTF currently has seven members, including the Urban Agenda Partnership on Innovative and Responsible Public Procurement. The Task Force supports its members and their initiatives through coordinated communication and joint efforts, reaching all combined networks. Activities include webinars, training sessions, articles, matchmaking opportunities, workshops, events, and more. Visit the website for more information: About – ITPF (iptf.eu)
The EU-funded LIFE GREEN PITCHES project (2022-2027) aims at stimulating circular, biobased, non-polluting, climate proof and energy positive innovations, using the innovative, durable ‘Scale Up’ tendering method. LIFE GREEN PITCHES will implement the Scale Up method in order to stimulate cooperation in the market for artificial grass pitches, and to facilitate consortiums to design and apply their innovative and sustainable solutions. Most citites depend on artificial grass to be able to offer enough sport, as artificial grass can be used more intensely than natural grass. However, artificial grass pitches are not circular yet, they cause heat stress, a reduced water management system and a huge pile of waste. Therefore, LIFE Green Pitches calls on market parties to cooperate in taking on this challenge. Visit the website for more information: LIFE Green Pitches - openresearch.amsterdam
The EU-funded PROCEDIN project (2022-2024) accelerates Procurement of Innovation (POI) adoption in two critical areas of innovation – circular economy and green mobility – in the context of European cities’ innovation for sustainability and resilience agendas. The project supports existing resources and its members’ extensive, pan-European professional networks and initiate new provisions to increase and mobilise POI motivation, knowledge and skills. PROCEDIN will identify key gaps in provision by mapping the complex landscape of growing expertise, experience and learning infrastructure, focusing on promoting enduring access to POI guidance and learning resources for buyers and vendors, and building leadership capacity for innovation. Visit the website for more information: PROCEDIN – Procurement Capability for Embedding and Driving Innovation
The EU-funded PROTECT project (2022-2024) seeks to support urgent action for climate adaptation and mitigation through innovation procurement procedures. It specifically aims to enable public authorities from different European regions to collaborate on a joint pre-commercial procurement. PROTECT enables public authorities to use state-of-the-art public procurement approaches in order to identify solutions – climate services based on Earth Observation – that best fit the specific and systemic needs of the public demand. The focus is on five application domains, namely: Energy & Utilities, Sustainable Urban Communities, Agriculture, Forestry and other Land use, Marine and Coastal Environments and Civil Security and Protection. Visit the website for more information: PROTECT Project – PROTECT (protect-pcp.eu)
PCP- WISE
The PCP-WISE project (2024-2027) aims to customize/pre-operationalize water management innovations from space for European climate resilience via pre-commercial procurement (PCP). It addresses water-related crises (floods, fires, infrastructure impacts) using space and Earth Observation data. With climate change impacting water availability and distribution, PCP-WISE seeks to enhance EO-based information for better regional water management, promoting resilience across EU borders. It focuses on local dynamics in water availability and aims to anticipate extreme climate conditions through an integrated water intelligence system. The project's significance lies in its potential to mitigate water-related crises, driven by a unified water taxonomy and Earth observation-based modeling.