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Introduction
With 90% of global GDP now committed to Net Zero by 2050, businesses across the board face pressure to report and act on their climate impact. In this landscape, CDP has emerged as a gold standard for disclosure [1].
This year, over 23,000 companies, representing two-thirds of global market capitalisation, will report through CDP [2]. These companies will navigate CDP’s extensive questionnaire of 450+ questions, detailing environmental impacts, governance structures, risk assessments, and business strategies. Despite CDP’s efforts to streamline, the reporting workload remains substantial [3].
The burden on sustainability teams is clear: 70% report that time spent on disclosure is limiting their ability to implement strategy [4]. As CDP’s CEO puts it, “Every dollar an organization spends on reporting is a dollar they cannot spend on action” [5].
That’s why we’ve built Report GenAI: our AI assistant for ESG reporting. It’s designed to help teams draft and submit ESG reports in a fraction of the time, freeing them up to act on the data they disclose.
In this blog, we’ll examine how Report GenAI transforms the CDP reporting process, accelerating each step from data collection to report drafting. We’ll explore challenges in the current CDP reporting process and demonstrate how AI can be deployed to automate unnecessary manual work, enhancing both the speed and quality of reports.
Why Report with CDP?
CDP reporting provides a useful stock-take organisation’s climate transparency and performance. Companies that disclose through CDP report that they can better understand their environmental impacts, drive climate action, increase ambition, reduce risk, meet regulatory requirements, and implement best practices [6].
Furthermore, as of 2024, CDP questionnaires are substantially aligned with some of the world’s most relevant frameworks and standards, like ESRS E1 (as required for CSRD reporting), US SEC Climate Disclosure (under review), IFRS S2, GRI, TCFD, TNFD and the GHG Protocol [7]. By preparing a CDP disclosure, organisations collect and organise their data in a format that is largely compatible with these major global reporting requirements.
CDP Reporting Requirments
The 2024 CDP questionnaire comprises 13 modules with 450+ questions, covering topics from governance strategy to water usage. Companies select modules to report on based on materiality to their business, sector requirements, and stakeholder requests.
Companies are evaluated on four key aspects: Disclosure, Awareness, Management, and Leadership, and graded on a scale from A to F.
Challenges in CDP reporting
Only a small percentage of companies (about 1.5% in 2022) achieve the top scores, often receiving lower marks than anticipated. Lower scores can stem from challenges in the reporting workflow, rather than simply issues with a company’s climate performance.
CDP has identified the following common errors in the interpretation of the CDP reporting guidelines:
A typical workflow involves many time-consuming manual steps.
These challenges underscore the need for a more efficient approach to CDP reporting - one that simplifies adherence to the guidelines, streamlines data retrieval and facilitates the drafting of accurate and consistent responses.
The case for generative AI tools in CDP reporting
“Generative AI” is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can generate new material based on the language and context from datasets to produce human-like text responses. While conventional AI can classify then predict, generative AI creates new content from learned patterns. The created material can include text, images, code, audio and video. This technology is being used to transform workflows across industries - from generating personalised responses to customer inquiries, to assisting with drafting of legal documents.
In the context of CDP report, generative AI Agents can be connected to a company’s knowledge base to compose and assist with answers to ESG reports.
- Rapid Data Retrieval: AI can quickly scan and extract relevant information from multiple data sources, ensuring comprehensive and accurate responses.
- Efficient Drafting Capabilities: AI can generate initial drafts, freeing up sustainability teams to focus on improving responses, leading to higher-quality submissions.
- On-Demand Guidance: An AI-powered chatbot can provide immediate answers to questions about reporting requirements or best practices.
Introducing Report GenAI by Gardenia
Report GenAI, a new feature of the Gardenia Sustainability Analytics platform, is designed to streamline the CDP reporting process.
Using Report GenAI, initial responses to CDP questions are generated automatically using your company’s existing data, allowing sustainability teams to focus on reviewing and refining answers. Here’s how it works:
01 Pre-Fill Reports using AI Assistant: With access to an emissions database calculated from your activity data (e.g. Energy consumption, purchases) as well as user-uploaded documents (e.g. environmental policies, past reports) our Report GenAI can retrieve and compose answers to CDP reporting questions in seconds. Upon logging into the dashboard, users will find their report pre-filled by the AI Assistant.
02 Review Sources and Responses: For every response, the Gen AI Assistant cites sources, queries and calculations used. This allows you to trace and verify the accuracy of answers and maintain a clear audit trail.
03 Edit & Submit Your Report: Report GenAI puts you in control of the reporting process. You can edit answers manually, or you can ask the Agent to update answers for you through the chatbot window.
From one month to one week: reducing CDP reporting preparation time with Report GenAI
We recently worked with Omni Helicopters International to reduce their CDP report preparation time by 75% - from one month to one week.
OHI's mission is to lead on sustainable vertical mobility. They're focused on achieving real sustainability across their products - but before working with Gardenia, their team spent a month every year on CDP disclosure. That was time they wanted to spend on strategy and implementation instead.
Using Report GenAI, OHI now prepares their report in one week. The tool automates data retrieval, initial drafting, and formatting - while the team reviews and refines every answer. They just don't start from a blank page or hunt through multiple systems for data anymore.
Conclusion: Driving action through efficient disclosure
CDP’s mission is to drive action through disclosure. Reporting drives accountability, transparency and clarity on climate action across industries. But there's a challenge to achieving its goals, when 70% of sustainability professionals report that time spent on preparing disclosures is limiting their ability to implmement change.
Report GenAI addresses this, by automating the manual work (data retrieval, initial drafting, formatting) while keeping humans in control of the final content. The time saved can go toward more teams more thorough review of disclosures (improving report quality) or toward other sustainability initiatives (improving actual outcomes).
If your team is facing CDP reporting season, we can show you how Report GenAI works with your specific data.
Sources
[1] ERM. Rate the Raters 2023: Driving quality in ESG ratings and data products through greater transparency. 2023. Available from: https://www.sustainability.com/globalassets/sustainability.com/thinking/pdfs/2023/rate-the-raters-report-april-2023.pdf
[2] Bloomberg Live. CDP's Sherry Madera on the Global Stocktake [Video]. 2023. YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4I-5BkJhHo
[3] edie Newsroom. CDP updates platform in bid to streamline corporate environmental disclosures. 2023. Available from: https://www.edie.net/cdp-updates-platform-in-bid-to-streamline-corporate-environmental-disclosures/
[4] edie Newsroom. Survey: Reporting admin 'distracting' corporate sustainability leaders from more impactful work. 2024. Available from: https://www.edie.net/survey-reporting-admin-distracting-corporate-sustainability-leaders-from-more-impactful-work/
[5] Investment & Pensions Europe. CDP launches net-zero disclosure platform to improve climate, nature reporting. 2023. Available from: https://www.ipe.com/news/cdp-launches-net-zero-disclosure-platform-to-improve-climate-nature-reporting/10073658.article
[6] CDP. Financial institutions with $142 trillion in assets demand climate and nature data as CDP unveils new disclosure platform. 2024. Available from: https://www.cdp.net/en/articles/media/financial-institutions-with-a-record-142-trillion-in-assets-demand-climate-and-nature-data-as-cdp-unveils-new-disclosure-platform
[7] CDP. CDP 2024 disclosure frameworks and standards. 2024. Available from: https://www.cdp.net/en/2024-disclosure/disclosure-frameworks-and-standards
