Corporate sustainability is a massive concern for businesses trying to succeed in today’s business landscape. As investors, consumers, and regulators continue to demand better transparency and accountability from organizations, businesses need to be able to demonstrate their commitment to environmental awareness and provide detailed insights about their carbon footprint. 

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The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is a global, non-profit organization that has helped drive a substantial shift in this reporting by establishing a clear and standardized framework for businesses to effectively disclose the environmental impact of their operations. It has evolved into a crucial tool for organizations to measure the performance of their sustainability initiatives, identify potential risks and opportunities, and disclose their strategies for reducing environmental impact to stakeholders. 

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In this article, we will discuss various aspects of CDP reporting, such as how you can use the CDP reporting framework to improve your CDP score, how to benchmark your organization against industry peers, and CDP disclosures. We will also highlight the important role that Flexidao can play in helping your business streamline and optimize its CDP disclosures. 

CDP Score Benchmarking

A CDP score measures an organization’s level of transparency and sustainability performance, from A (leadership) to F (failure to disclose). These scores easily reflect how well a business manages its carbon emission, energy utilization, environment-related strategies, and communication with stakeholders. 

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CDP score benchmarking is a beneficial way for your business to measure its environmental performance against industry peers. This helps identify whether your sustainability efforts are on par with or exceed those of other businesses within your field. CDP reporting and benchmarking also allow businesses to set larger sustainability goals, attract new potential investors, and establish a sense of healthy competition between organizations. 

CDP Reporting Framework Structure

CDP is a global database where companies, cities, public authorities, states, or regions disclose the environmental impact of their operations such as greenhouse gas emissions. As long as you fall under one of these categories, you can register your company or request an addition to a registered company at this link:

• You want to be added to an organization that's already registered and has received a request from one of your customers to disclose this year but currently has no active users
• You want to register your organization as a self-selected company to disclose through CDP independently and share your responses with CDP Capital Markets Signatories
• You want to disclose as a city, state, or region

The window for submitting your CDP report opens on the 4th of June. To receive a CDP score, your organization must submit a response by the 18th of September. The final deadline for reporting to CDP (as well as RE100) this year falls on the 2nd of October. Should you need to make any changes to your CDP response after submitting it, you can request amendments until the 2nd of December.

CDP Disclosures 

CDP requires businesses to disclose environmental data across various categories. These disclosure categories are crucial for clearly understanding an organization’s level of environmental impact and assessing its sustainability initiatives. 

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Key disclosure areas include: 

• Climate change:
• Greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1, 2, and 3)
• Climate change strategy
• Low-carbon transition plans
• Renewable energy sourcing
• Water security (Water use, Water risk management, Water stewardship initiatives)
• Forest conservation:
• Forest-related activities
• Deforestation risk
• Forest conservation measures

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Additional disclosure areas may be applicable depending on various industrial and organizational factors. 

Using Flexidao to organize the electricity data you need for CDP Reporting

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Flexidao can assist your organization in providing and managing the necessary data on your electricity consumption to provide comprehensive and accurate information for this section of your CDP disclosure. We help you gather metering, certificate and contract data on your renewable electricity purchases, including details such as sourcing method, technology type, tracking instrument, country of origin, and commissioning year. Additionally, we assist you in calculating and reporting your Scope 2 emissions, breaking them down by country to provide a clear understanding of your organization's environmental impact. 

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By integrating Flexidao’s tools, companies can benefit from simplified data management, automated workflows, and improved accuracy in their environmental reporting, making the process less cumbersome. The various benefits of our platform include: 

1. Automated Data Collection 

Flexidao’s platform automates the collection and quality assurance of data regarding your organization’s electricity supply and related emissions (a crucial aspect of accurate CDP disclosures).  This ensures that environmental data is centralized in one location, eliminating the need for manual data collection and entry. 

2. Real-Time Reporting

Flexidao's platform has been built with the questions you need to report to CDP on your energy supply in mind. This means that your business automatically has the necessary oversight and KPI’s about your energy consumption to fill out this section of the report. . This allows you to make quick and easy adjustments if there are any gaps in your procurement you need to account for and ensures accurate and precise reporting to disclosure schemes like RE100 and CDP. 

3. Effective Data System Integration 

Flexidao can be easily integrated with other systems such as energy management tools, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, ESG software and financial systems. This significantly streamlines data flow and improves reporting efficiency.

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Speak with our experts today to learn more about how we can help enhance your CDP reporting process.