Carbon Disclosure Project Reporting
Improving your Carbon Disclosure Project scores.
12 Top Tips from Brian O’Kennedy of Clearstream Solutions on how to improve your 2011 submission.
It’s mid May and the questionnaire has just landed on the desk of someone working in finance, the company secretary’s office or the CEO has sought out a victim…… “who looks after this environmental stuff?”. Panic sets in. $70trillion in investor’s funds looking for a home and you are worried about making a mess of the report!
If you are unsure about how much to disclose, or whether to disclose publically, we suggest you begin by selecting one part of your organisation. Get on the train and you will learn a lot in the first year or two. You can then decide to go public and to expand the scope in subsequent years. Check out the CDP website and see if your competitors have responded and what they have disclosed.
Clearstream Solutions have helped numerous companies through the CDP reporting process, and even in the best organisations, this reporting process can cause significant confusion. Below are some practical steps and advice to guide you through the process.
1. Start by reading the guidance document on the CDP website… ‘Guide to using the 2010 ORS’. https://www.cdproject.net/en-US/Respond/Documents/GuidetoORS.pdf
2. Formulate your response strategy before you start. Defining the scope of your business, locations and time periods will have a big impact on the complexity of your response.
3. If you are new to the CDP process or are trying to expand the scope, greater disclosure on a narrower scope will score better than limited disclosure on a very broad scope.
4. Make sure you have top management input in particular on the Governance, Risk and Strategy sections before you begin and ideally agree on an emissions reduction target.
5. CDP at this point is about ‘Disclosure’ and not ‘Performance’. There are no wrong answers……. only poor disclosure.
6. Attach as much data and back up information as possible, in particular where it adds additional credibility to your measures. And don’t expect the assessors to follow links to search for the information.
7. Don’t cross reference answers. If necessary include the same answer multiple times if appropriate.
8. Be specific and concise. Short relevant bullet points are likely to achieve the same or better scores than long rambling commentary.
9. Don’t leave blanks. If you are unsure, say why. Or make some comment as to your performance or intentions and answer the follow on questions. ‘No’ with an explanation is better than ‘I don’t know’.
10. Complete all tables. Failing to input data into any of the tables will drag your scores down. For example 3 intensity measures are looked for. Give them three!
11. Provide evidence of external support and verification of your data and ideally provide details of external systems and consultants used.
12. If compliance reporting is not your day to day work, then the terminology can be a little confusing. If you are unsure of any part of your response, contact us at info@clearstreamsolutions.ie and we’ll be happy to help to explain what is required.