1: Green Products and Services

Enhance North American trade in green products and services, with a view to improving environmental protection, promoting sustainable use of biodiversity, removing trade barriers and utilizing market-based approaches.

Other Information:

Projects will promote the North American renewable energy market: - Share best practices on developing a renewable energy market; - Enhance the use of available information about renewable energy resources; - Investigate policies aimed at leveling the playing field related to transmission access; - Provide guidance for calculating the environmental benefits of renewables; - Promote purchases of renewable energy; and - Take actions to promote a North American market for renewable energy certificates. By harnessing abundant, naturally occurring sources of energy, such as the sun, the wind, geothermal heat, biomass, bio-fuels, and bio-plastics, renewable energy can help provide for current and future North American energy needs with few environmental impacts. The North American renewable energy market faces a number of challenges including higher initial costs, transmission line service gaps, and the differing renewable energy purchasing requirements employed by local, state/provincial, and national governments. A positive development is the emerging voluntary market for renewable energy certificates (RECs). RECs allow consumers to support renewable energy even if their local utility does not provide it directly. Increased outreach and education can foster REC markets. Through targeted actions, the Parties and the CEC can address some of the informational and transactional barriers that add to the cost of renewable energy and assist policymakers as they implement policies to promote renewable energy. Projects will promote North American markets for green products and services: - Assist in enhancing the compatibility of green procurement practices across North America; and - Share attributes, procurement techniques, life cycle and market information, and information related to the means of measuring both the environmental and economic benefits of green products and services to build the capacity of government and non-government entities to purchase these products and services. Green products and services have beneficial environmental and/or energy attributes, such as recycled content, energy efficiency, and no or low amounts of hazardous or toxic constituents, as well as, often, economic benefits. The NAFTA parties attach strong importance to the promotion of North American markets for green products and services and are committed to purchasing them and to promoting their use by all levels of governments and non-government entities. Applying environmental decisions to even a fraction of the one trillion dollar annual North American procurement market would stimulate the demand for green products and services and achieve significant environmental benefits. There are a number of obstacles that prevent growth of the North American green procurement market such as a need to share information about: successful procurement techniques, including energy or environmental attributes; market segments within and outside of the national governments; existing life cycle or cost benefit tools appropriate for purchasing a given product or service; and, government or third party certification opportunities. Also, there is no common baseline of energy and environmental attributes for a given product or service. Working together through the CEC, the Parties can overcome some of these obstacles and help grow the green procurement market across North America. Projects will promote better use of market-based approaches to support environmental protection, conservation, and the sustainable use of biodiversity: - Research and select areas/species or topics that will help identify possible green products and services; - Facilitate identification and prioritization of products/services for which viable markets for sustainably- produced goods could be developed across North America; - Enhance the availability and quality of information on best practices in using market-based and financial mechanisms for fostering sustainable use of resources; and - Analyze methods to harness emerging green market opportunities. Conservationists are exploring methods to harness public-private partnerships, stewardship mechanisms, economic incentives and financial instruments to serve North America’s marine and terrestrial species and areas. The CEC’s work on shade grown coffee, sustainable palm and sustainable tourism are examples of applying market-based approaches to conservation. They demonstrate how the triple goals of sustainable land use, poverty alleviation, and economic and trade development can be mutually supportive. This priority area aims to build upon these successes in an effort to increase trade while achieving environmental protection and sustainability goals.

Indicator(s):

Indicator:1

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