CDP Supply Chain Request: An SME Response Guide

The email says a customer has “requested that you disclose through CDP”, with a link to a portal and a deadline in September. If this is your first contact with CDP, the immediate questions are what you have agreed to, how much work it is, and whether it costs money.

The short answers: your customer is one of more than 270 large purchasers using CDP to collect environmental data from suppliers, around 45,000 of whom were asked to disclose in 2025; there is a shorter SME questionnaire most small businesses qualify for; responding to a customer’s request is free; and not responding earns a public “Did not disclose” status your customer can see. This guide covers the rest.

What a CDP Request Is

CDP is the world’s largest environmental disclosure platform. Investors and large corporate buyers subscribe to it; the buyers (“Supply Chain members”) send disclosure requests to their suppliers, whose responses feed the buyer’s Scope 3 accounting and supplier decisions — the same CSRD-driven pressure behind most ESG requests, routed through a platform.

Unlike a customer spreadsheet, a CDP response is annual, structured, scored, and reusable: you answer once per year and every requesting customer sees the same response. Note that platform requests sit outside the EU’s value-chain cap, like EcoVadis invitations, so CDP requests lawfully continue alongside VSME-shaped questionnaires.

The SME Questionnaire: Check Your Eligibility First

Since 2024 CDP has run a dedicated SME questionnaire, and it is the single most important thing to know about: it is substantially shorter than the full corporate questionnaire, and around 11,000 SMEs used it last cycle.

You qualify if you have 1,000 or fewer employees and annual revenue of US$250 million or less. Above either threshold, the full corporate questionnaire applies (a single integrated questionnaire spanning climate, water, forests, plastics, biodiversity, and, from 2026, ocean).

The 2026 SME questionnaire is climate-focused: an introduction, risks and opportunities, governance, business strategy, and environmental performance covering your energy and emissions. Two new sections, forests and water security, appear only if you opt in or a requesting customer asks for those themes, and neither is scored in 2026. There are no sector-specific questions.

What It Costs

Responding to a supply-chain request is free: CDP’s administrative fee is waived for organisations that have only been requested to disclose by Supply Chain members (and certain other programmes). The fee applies if you are requested by capital-markets investors or choose to disclose on your own initiative, in which case European tiers start around €3,000. For a supplier answering a customer, budget time, not money.

The time budget looks like other structured assessments: a few working days spread across the response window, mostly gathering your energy and emissions figures and writing short governance and strategy answers.

The 2026 Timeline

The practical reading: start when the window opens, not when the deadline approaches, because the scored deadline in mid September is the one your customer cares about. A late response still counts as disclosure but forfeits the score.

How Scoring Works

The SME questionnaire is scored on its own scale — SME A, SME B, SME C, SME D — covering climate change only in 2026. SME A is new for 2026, scoring leadership-level performance for the first time; it is deliberately not equivalent to the full corporate A grade. Requested companies that do not respond are marked “Did not disclose”, and that status, visible to your customer, is the real cost of ignoring the email.

Score bands reward the classic maturity ladder: disclosing what you have, understanding your risks, managing them, and leading. For a first year, a complete, honest response with measured Scope 1 and 2 figures is a solid result; chasing the top band matters more in year two.

Preparing Your Response, Step by Step

1. Confirm the SME questionnaire applies when you register — the thresholds above decide it, and the shorter form roughly halves the work.
2. Gather energy and emissions first. Scope 1 and 2 from fuel and electricity bills is the questionnaire’s data core; our Scope 1 vs Scope 2 guide covers the calculation, and documented estimates are acceptable.
3. Draft the governance and strategy answers short and true. Who is responsible for climate topics, what risks you see, what you plan. A named owner and a dated intention beat invented programmes.
4. Answer within the scored window. Mid June to mid September, with the customer-visible score as the payoff.
5. Bank the response. CDP’s questions overlap heavily with the VSME disclosures your other requests draw on — energy and emissions above all. There is no official CDP–VSME mapping, but the underlying dataset is the same, so store each answer with its source in an ESG answer bank and reuse it across CDP, customer spreadsheets, and bank requests. A free VSME report tool generates a finished VSME report from those answers at no cost, a useful standing document alongside the CDP response.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we have to respond to a CDP request?

There is no legal obligation, and the value-chain cap does not compel platform participation. Commercially, a non-response is visible: CDP marks requested companies that do not disclose as “Did not disclose”, and your customer sees that status against your name. Given that the SME questionnaire is free and moderate effort, responding is usually the cheaper path.

Is our CDP response public?

Your response goes to the customers who requested it, and scoring feeds CDP’s datasets. You choose response visibility settings when disclosing, so review them at submission rather than assuming either privacy or publicity. Scores themselves are designed to be shared, which is why they carry commercial weight.

We already have a VSME report. Does it cover the CDP questionnaire?

Not formally: CDP publishes mappings to the ESRS and other frameworks, but none to VSME as of 2026. Practically, the overlap is large, because your VSME B3 energy and emissions data, governance basics, and policies answer most of the SME questionnaire’s factual content. Expect to add CDP-specific pieces, chiefly the risks-and-opportunities and strategy narratives.

What if we miss the September deadline?

You can still submit until late October, and amendments are accepted to the same date, but the response will not be scored. An unscored disclosure still clears the “Did not disclose” status, so late is meaningfully better than never; just plan next year’s cycle around the June opening.

Key Terms

• CDP — the global environmental disclosure platform through which investors and large purchasers request standardised data from companies and suppliers.
• Supply Chain member — a purchasing organisation that uses CDP to request disclosure from its suppliers; over 270 buyers with more than US$6 trillion of procurement spend.
• SME questionnaire — CDP’s shorter questionnaire for organisations with 1,000 or fewer employees and revenue of US$250 million or less; climate-focused, scored SME A–D.
• “Did not disclose” — the public status assigned to requested companies that do not respond.
• Scope 1 and Scope 2 — emissions from fuel you burn and energy you buy; the data core of the SME questionnaire.

Conclusion

A CDP request is the most structured ESG ask a small supplier receives, and paradoxically one of the most manageable: eligibility rules put you on a shorter form, responding to your customer costs nothing, and the timeline is published months in advance. Gather the emissions data, write short honest narratives, and hit the scored window.

Then treat the response as an asset. The figures CDP wants are the figures everyone wants, and a supplier who banks them once walks into the next request — spreadsheet, platform, or bank — already holding the answers.