GSA cover material_Letter

[Date]

[Contact Name]
[Title]
[Company Name]
Via Electronic Transmission

Dear [Contact Name],

The General Services Administration (GSA) is reaching out to encourage your company to participate in the voluntary 2018 CDP Supply Chain Survey. CDP is a not-for-profit charity that runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts. To encourage and benchmark the state of similar practices within the Federal supply chain, in 2019, GSA will participate in the CDP Supply Chain survey of suppliers’ energy and environmental management practices.

The General Services Administration (GSA) is the Federal government’s leading supplier of real estate, acquisition, and technology services. GSA is aware of significant cost savings opportunities presented by effective, organization-wide management. Since the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which set strict targets for reducing energy and water consumption of Federal agencies, GSA’s real estate operations have saved more than $540 million in reduced energy and water costs — including over $109 million in fiscal 2016 alone.

GSA experience has shown that suppliers who respond to CDP, and in particular, those who disclose data on well-developed energy and environmental management programs, demonstrate significant savings. In 2016, GSA contractors responding to CDP reported investing over $9 billion in energy and related efficiency projects, which were already yielding over $2 billion in annual cost savings to those suppliers — an average payback period of less than 5 years. Based on feedback from large private-sector purchasing organizations, these overhead savings in the supply chain will likely translate into acquisition cost savings for GSA. Many GSA suppliers also reported related benefits from enhanced brand reputation, international competitiveness, customer satisfaction, and management of regulatory, business continuity, and extreme-weather-related risks.

Your response to the CDP survey is voluntary. GSA encourages you to use this process to establish and publicly disclose strong targets and practices for environmental and energy-related risk management, energy efficiency, greenhouse gas management, and related environmental impacts. CDP will offer you the choice to make either a “private” response (viewable only by CDP and GSA), or, as thousands of leading companies have chosen, a public response. Based on previous responses from GSA suppliers, companies making a public response tend to experience the greatest benefits from energy and environmental management. Responding publicly also will allow you to benefit from CDP’s streamlined approach to disclosure, allowing communication of your practices to multiple investors, customers, and other interested stakeholders through a single response.

You will shortly receive an email from CDP inviting you to share your organization’s respective efficiency management information through CDP’s questionnaire and online response system. CDP is asking that suppliers activate their responses by [date] and fill out and submit as much of the questionnaire as possible by [date]. If your company is already disclosing through CDP, the online response system will be pre-populated with your prior year responses and will allow you to complete just a few additional questions to allow GSA to view your responses.

We thank you in advance for your consideration. If you have any questions, please contact Jed Ela at jed.ela@gsa.gov. We look forward to working with you on this program.

Yours sincerely,

[Signature]

[GSA signatory name]
[Title]
Office of Government-wide Policy
U.S. General Services Administration