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The “most economically advantageous tender,” as defined in the EUʼs public procurement directives, allows public purchasers to combine environmental aspects, price and other award criteria in decision making. The directives do not, however, determine how the environmental criteria should be built. Indeed, there could be different means to assess the “greenness” of competing tenders, and these various measurements of environmental impacts may lead to different assessments of the most economically advantageous tender. In this article, the determination of environmental award criteria is examined through a case study on a purchase of a goods transportation service, where the most economically advantageous tender is calculated by life cycle assessment and the environmental cost calculation method suggested by the EU, and compared to the results gained by the purchaserʼs equation. Also the contribution of the weighting for the “green” purchasing decision is discussed.

Public procurement is a major driving force that can be used to advance societal goals such as sustainability. The lack of strategic management and top-level commitment have been found to be major hindrances to the promotion of sustainable public procurement (SPP). This study aims to examine the functioning of a successful Finnish SPP development programme, the KEINO Academy (2019–2020), that tackled these challenges in a holistic way.

The article is mainly based on qualitative analysis of interviews with 24 municipal representatives.

The KEINO Academy advanced SPP management through the following functions: legitimising SPP development work, structuring SPP development work, offering expert support and facilitating peer support. The functions were mainly able to meet the key challenges experienced by the participating municipalities. However, some challenges cannot be directly solved by an intermediary such as the KEINO Academy. These challenges include, for example, a lack of resources.

On the basis of the study, SPP development programmes should: build a holistic working model; respect the versatility of the participating organisations; involve all the key people in the organisations, including the directors; and sustain change.

The main theoretical contribution is the combination of two streams of literature, those of SPP management and intermediary functions. Further, the article makes an empirical contribution by studying the KEINO Academy as a pioneering SPP development case.