Get Ready for CDP Reporting

What is CDP?

Started in 2000 as the Carbon Disclosure Project, CDP is a reporting framework and platform that collects self-reported climate risk and opportunities data from corporations around the world. Initially, the focus was on climate, but now the platform has expanded to include water, forests, plastics, and biodiversity. It has also expanded into supplier engagement with their CDP supply chain program. It has partnered with 300 of the world’s largest companies to engage their suppliers to measure, manage, and disclose their environmental data.

The world’s most comprehensive environmental database?

With 22,400 companies receiving a CDP score, the platform is the world’s most comprehensive environmental database. The CDP platform provides comparable, consistent, and relevant data across time and the competitive landscape. Insights from this data help empower investors, companies, cities, and national and regional governments to transition to more resilient business models and make Earth-positive decisions.

In 2024, nearly 25,000 companies, worth two-thirds of global market capitalization, disclosed through CDP. Of these, over 3,500 disclosed holistically on all three themes (climate change, deforestation and water security) – a significant increase from 2023. More than 12,500 disclosed through CDP’s new SME questionnaire, starting their journey from disclosure to data-driven action in a way more suited to their needs and resources.

Leveraging CDP for Regulatory Compliance

Most regulations require companies to disclose their climate-related financial risks and opportunities, emissions data, and targets. Worldwide regulations are based on several standards and frameworks, like the ISSB and IFRS standards, or the ESRS (European Sustainability Reporting Standards) in Europe. CDP is one of the best platforms to navigate and consolidate the growing environmental reporting requirements.

While CDP is a voluntary disclosure framework, it is aligned with most frameworks, developing partnerships with organizations like the EFRAG and refining its disclosure framework to maintain consistency with ESRS S1 and with IFRS – S2.

Source: CDP

CDP turns requirements from leading frameworks into actionable steps for companies, digesting the requirements to understand what they mean in practice. Companies can use CDP reporting to prepare for regulations, begin to understand the processes and strategies they would need to implement to meet the standards, and stay ahead of the game when the time comes for mandatory reporting.

With its philosophy of providing respondents with a tool to “Write once, ready many times,” the platform provides a data source that companies can use to provide investors with comprehensive qualitative and quantitative information on their environmental strategy, going beyond climate and including water, forests, plastics, and biodiversity as material to their company.

The 2025 Questionnaire Structure

Revisions to the 2025 CDP disclosure questionnaire, reporting guidance, and scoring methodology have been minimal, compared to 2024. The focus has been on improving the user experience, providing more stability, and ensuring data integrity on the technology platform. For last year’s reporters, this means you can look at the previous year’s report and focus on improving and expanding your disclosures to improve your score.

CDP 2025 Full Corporate Questionnaire Structure

Modules 1 to 6, and 13 are integrated, which means that questions in these modules cover more than one environmental issue area. Conversely, modules 7 to 11 are specific to an environmental issue area. Modules 10 and 11 are specific to the environmental issues of plastics and biodiversity and are not scored. Organizations in the financial services sector will be presented with module 12, which is an integrated, sector-specific ‘Environmental Performance’ module

The SME Questionnaire

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises can respond to a shortened version of the CDP questionnaire presented in Modules 14 to 21. The SME corporate questionnaire is tailored to the needs of SMEs and contains fewer and simplified data points. Only organizations that meet CDP’s SME eligibility thresholds will have the option to complete the SME corporate questionnaire

• Module 14 – SME Introduction

• Module 15 – SME Identification, Assessment and Management of Risks and Opportunities

• Module 16 – SME Disclosure of Risks and Opportunities

• Module 17 – SME Governance

• Module 18 – SME Business Strategy

• Module 19 – SME Environmental Performance – Consolidation Approach

• Module 20 – SME Environmental Performance – Climate Change

• Module 21 – SME Sign Off
  

The Scoring Methodology

CDP uses a tiered approach, scoring organizations across 4 levels as the organization progresses through environmental stewardship maturity. The levels are:

• Disclosure – The Disclosure score measures the completeness of an organization’s reporting.

• Awareness – The Awareness score measures the comprehensiveness of an organization’s evaluation of how environmental issues intersect with their business. The awareness score does not indicate that an organization has taken any actions to address environmental issues beyond initial screenings or assessments.

• Management – The Management score measures whether organizations are managing their environmental impact, awarding points for answers that provide evidence of undertaking actions associated with good environmental management.

• Leadership – To earn leadership status, organizations must demonstrate best practice in the strategies they utilize and the actions they undertake. These actions represent best practice as formulated by organizations working with CDP to advance environmental stewardship and, in many cases, are already embodied by organizations leading in environmental policy and practice
  

Essential Criteria: As well as achieving a minimum score in a level to be able to move to the next level, CDP also utilizes as system of essential criteria. To be able to achieve a score within a given score level, these criteria must be met within the response. Even if a responder has passed the threshold to be scored within a scoring level, they will not be eligible to be scored for that level if they do not pass all of the essential criteria associated with it.

While the questionnaire is integrated, CDP will continue to score climate change, water, and forests separately. Plastics and Biodiversity will not be scored.

Sector-based scoring: CDP uses a sector-based approach, using the primary sector for the company and adds sector-specific questions to high-impact sectors. The scoring might be different for high-impact sectors than the scoring used for all responders. The sector-based approach allows CDP to make more meaningful assessments of organizations’ responses, incorporating each sector’s characteristics and nuances, resulting in a score that reflects the organization’s progress in environmental stewardship and enabling better benchmarking against other companies

The scoring methodology translates best practices and provides a way for companies to understand how they move from one stage to the next in their sustainability journey. The qualitative responses help companies demonstrate and provide a narrative of their progress beyond the quantitative information. The scores help demonstrate leadership and provide benchmarks over time.

First time responders

For first time reporters, disclosing to CDP can be daunting task. Getting speed with the data collection, engaging with internal stakeholders, understanding the questionnaire and scoring methodologies can take a considerable amount of time and resources. Our advice? Look at CDP as a tool than a task.

The questionnaire and reporting guidance can be used as a tool to understand what data needs to be collected and how to report it, so get started early. The questionnaire is already out, so you can download it and read it. The scoring methodology can be viewed as a path to what you are striving for. Now is a good time to do a gap analysis on what you currently have and what data you can collect to meet the September reporting deadline.

6 Benefits of responding to CDP

• 1 – Enhanced Transparency – Comprehensive data on environmental performance can be provided to all stakeholders including customers, investors and regulators, helping build brand reputation and demonstrate environmental leadership.

• 2 – Improved Risk management – Responding to CDP helps companies assess climate-related risks and improves resilience.

• 3 – Access to Capital – Environmentally responsible investors can review thecompany’s environmental performance through their CDP scores.

• 4 – Benchmarking and Best Practices – Helps companies understand best practices and a competitive review to see how other companies are approaching environmental challenges and implementing solutions. Helps identify areas of improvement.

• 5 – Supply Chain Engagement – Platform to engage with suppliers and collect environmental performance data from suppliers in a consistent manner.

• 6 – Be prepared for regulatory compliance – Collecting environmental data to respond to CDP prepares companies for regulatory compliance consistent with several reporting frameworks like the IFRS-S2 and ESRS-E1.

If your organization needs support in preparing for and responding to CDP, please get in touch with us to learn how The CSR Group can help.