If you work in sustainability, there is a good chance your inbox has already received an email from CDP with a subject line along the lines of “You may start receiving requests from your customers to disclose via the CDP Supply Chain portal.” It happens every year between April and June, the window during which large buyers, manufacturers, retailers, and distributors formally request environmental data from their suppliers. The deadline is typically around 8 June. Each year the number of buyers sending these requests grows, the data they ask for becomes more granular, and the timeline stays exactly the same.
The good news is that most companies already have the data CDP needs. The real challenge is not collection, it is transformation: converting invoices in euros into consumption figures in MWh, aggregating data from multiple sites, and organising everything in the format the questionnaire requires.
What is a CDP Supply Chain request and why it arrives now
A CDP Supply Chain request is a formal environmental disclosure request sent by a buyer to its suppliers through the CDP portal. CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project) is the world’s most widely used environmental reporting system. Originally designed for listed companies to disclose climate risks to institutional investors, it has evolved into a supply chain tool: large corporations now use it to evaluate the environmental performance and climate risk exposure of their supplier base.
The annual calendar is fixed. Between April and June, buyers open the CDP portal and initiate supplier requests. The standard disclosure deadline is around 8 June each year, though some buyers extend this for specific suppliers. When you receive the CDP notification email, the clock is already running.
CDP Supply Chain participation has grown substantially over the past decade. According to CDP’s 2024 annual report, more than 23,000 companies disclosed through CDP in 2024, with supply chain programmes representing one of the fastest-growing disclosure categories. If one of your major customers has sustainability commitments or is subject to CSRD reporting obligations, the probability that they will request CDP data from you this year is high.
What data CDP requires: energy and waste in detail
The CDP Supply Chain questionnaire covers three main areas: energy and climate data, waste management data, and governance and strategy questions about climate risk. The first two blocks generate most of the operational work.
Energy block
The energy section requires data expressed in standardised units, not in euros or volume measures. Specific requirements include:
- Total energy consumption in MWh across all facilities and operations
- Breakdown by fuel type: grid electricity, natural gas, diesel, LPG, biomass, and any other fuel used
- Percentage of renewable energy, distinguishing between directly generated renewables (such as on-site solar) and electricity covered by certificates of origin (GdOs or REGOs)
- Consumption disaggregated by site or facility, and sometimes by country for multi-national operations
- Fleet vehicle data if applicable, broken down by fuel type (petrol, diesel, electric, hybrid)
- Year-over-year comparison so buyers can assess trends, not just point-in-time figures
A practical example of what CDP asks: “Total renewable electricity consumption in 2025, in MWh, broken down by each of your production facilities.”
Waste block
The waste section requires:
- Total waste generated during the reporting year, typically in metric tonnes or kilograms
- Breakdown by hazard classification: hazardous versus non-hazardous waste streams
- Breakdown by waste type: packaging waste, process waste, construction waste, electronic waste, and others
- Treatment method per waste stream: recycling, energy recovery, controlled landfill, incineration without energy recovery
- CO2 emissions associated with each treatment method, where the waste contractor provides this data
- Identification of the waste management contractors responsible for collection and treatment
Governance and climate risk
Beyond energy and waste, CDP asks companies to describe their climate governance structure (who at board level is responsible for climate), any emissions reduction targets they have set, and their exposure to physical climate risks (flooding, heat stress, water scarcity) and transition risks (carbon pricing, regulatory changes, technology shifts). For most mid-sized suppliers, this section involves qualitative responses based on existing documentation.
The real bottleneck: data transformation, not data collection
Most companies have the underlying data CDP needs. The problem is that it lives in different formats and different places, none of which match what CDP’s questionnaire requires.
Electricity and gas invoices are in euros per billing period, stored in finance or procurement. Fleet diesel consumption is in litres, tracked in a logistics spreadsheet or fleet management system. Waste manifests and collection records arrive as PDFs from the waste contractor, quarterly or annually. Site-level consumption data may be in a facilities management system, or in local Excel files maintained by each plant manager.
Bringing all of this together, converting it to the right units (invoices to MWh requires knowing the applicable energy conversion factor), aggregating it correctly across sites, and ensuring the numbers reconcile typically takes two to four weeks of manual work. For companies with multiple sites or operations in more than one country, that estimate doubles.
The unit conversion issue is particularly time-consuming. CDP does not accept “we spent €45,000 on electricity.” It requires the MWh figure, which means cross-referencing invoices with tariff data or consumption meters, applying the correct conversion factors, and validating the aggregation. This is work that repeats every year, unless you build a system that does it automatically.
How to prepare your CDP data: a practical checklist
The seven items below are what you need before you can complete the CDP questionnaire. If you have all of them, you have the raw material. The remaining work is transformation and formatting.
- Electricity invoices for all sites (full year, every billing period)
- Natural gas and other stationary fuel invoices
- Fleet consumption data, in litres or kWh, broken down by fuel type
- Certificates of origin or renewable energy contracts if you have contracted renewable electricity
- Waste collection manifests or delivery notes from each authorised waste contractor
- Treatment type documentation per waste stream (recycling certificate, landfill gate receipt, etc.)
- The equivalent data from the previous year for trend comparison
A common mistake is starting the data collection process after the CDP portal opens. By then, you have four to six weeks to gather, convert, and submit. Starting the data organisation before April means the transformation work is already done when the deadline arrives.
CDP data reused: CSRD, EcoVadis, and Scope 3 requests
One of the most underappreciated aspects of CDP data preparation is its reuse value. The energy and waste data you compile for CDP is largely the same data that other frameworks and customers will request.
CSRD reporting, which is now mandatory for large EU companies and phasing in for mid-sized companies, requires Scope 1 and 2 emissions disclosures under ESRS E1. The underlying energy data is identical to what CDP asks for. EINF reporting, Spain’s equivalent disclosure framework for companies with more than 250 employees, requires the same energy and waste data structured according to Spanish regulatory requirements. EcoVadis assessments, used by procurement teams at companies including Renault, Danone, and Unilever, draw on the same metrics.
Direct customer requests from global buyers such as Walmart, BlackRock’s portfolio companies, or major European retailers often ask for Scope 3 supplier emissions data that relies on the same energy figures. Building a centralised, well-organised dataset for CDP means you can answer all of these requests from the same source, without re-collecting anything.
This is the infrastructure argument for taking CDP data preparation seriously: it is not just about responding to one annual request. It is about building the data foundation that satisfies every ESG demand your customers place on you, year after year. Dcycle’s platform automates the collection of Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions data across supplier networks and facilities, reducing the annual reporting cycle from weeks to hours.
How Dcycle automates CDP data preparation
Dcycle is designed to remove exactly the bottleneck described above: the gap between raw source files and the structured, aggregated, unit-converted data that CDP, CSRD, and EcoVadis require.
The process works in three steps. First, you upload source files in whatever format you have them: electricity invoices as PDFs, gas consumption as Excel exports, waste manifests as scanned documents. Dcycle’s automated data collection engine processes these files, extracts the relevant figures, applies the correct unit conversions, and organises the data by site, fuel type, and period. No manual conversion, no copy-paste between spreadsheets.
Second, you configure the reporting structure you need. CDP requires energy by site and fuel type; another buyer might need the same data with monthly granularity; CSRD needs it mapped to ESRS E1 categories. Define the structure once and reuse it across frameworks.
Third, when you need to respond to a CDP request, you export the relevant tables directly. When a second customer sends an EcoVadis request three months later, you use the same underlying data with a different filter. The dataset accumulates and improves over time, and each year’s reporting cycle is faster than the last.
Request a demo to see how Dcycle processes your actual source files and what reporting tables you can generate from them.
Frequently asked questions
What is a CDP Supply Chain request?
A CDP Supply Chain request is a formal environmental disclosure request sent by a large buyer to its suppliers through the CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project) platform. Buyers use it to evaluate the environmental performance and climate risk exposure of their supplier base. Requests typically arrive between April and June each year, with a standard deadline around 8 June.
What data does the CDP Supply Chain questionnaire ask for?
The CDP Supply Chain questionnaire covers energy consumption (in MWh, broken down by fuel type and site), waste generation and treatment (in tonnes, by hazard classification and treatment method), and governance questions about climate risk and reduction targets. The energy and waste sections require year-over-year data, not just current-year figures.
Why does CDP want energy data in MWh and not in euros?
CDP standardises energy data in MWh because euros vary by tariff, supplier, and country, making comparisons meaningless. MWh is a physical measure of energy consumed, independent of price. Converting from invoices (which show cost) to MWh requires knowing the applicable energy unit price or reading directly from consumption meters, which is the most common source of delay in CDP preparation.
Can I reuse CDP data for CSRD or EcoVadis?
Yes. The energy and waste data required for a CDP Supply Chain response is substantially the same data needed for CSRD ESRS E1 disclosures, EINF reporting in Spain, and EcoVadis assessments. Building a centralised, structured dataset for CDP means you can answer all of these from the same source, without re-collecting data for each framework.
How long does it take to prepare a CDP Supply Chain response?
Without a centralised system, manual preparation typically takes two to four weeks for a single-site company, and longer for multi-site or multi-country operations. The bottleneck is unit conversion and aggregation, not data availability. With a platform like Dcycle that processes source files automatically, the same task typically takes hours rather than weeks.
Conclusion
CDP Supply Chain requests arrive on a fixed schedule and the data they require is largely already in your organisation. The real challenge is transforming scattered invoices, manifests, and spreadsheets into the structured, unit-converted, aggregated format that CDP needs, and doing it before the June deadline. Building that data infrastructure also solves EcoVadis, CSRD, and direct customer requests simultaneously. Explore the CSRD resource hub for related guides, or request a demo to see how Dcycle processes your files and generates your CDP tables directly.