Key takeaway
CDP runs the world's largest environmental disclosure system. Every year, companies submit responses through CDP's Online Response System, and the public letter grade they receive (anywhere from A to F) ends up in investor reports, supply chain decisions, and procurement scorecards. This lesson explains what CDP is, who reads your score, and why the same number can mean very different things to different audiences.
Where CDP came from
CDP started in 2000 as the Carbon Disclosure Project, a small UK-based not-for-profit asking companies to publish their greenhouse gas emissions on behalf of a coalition of investors. The pitch was simple: investors managing large pools of capital could not assess climate risk if companies refused to disclose it. CDP became the polite collective letter that asked.
What began as a climate-only request now covers five environmental themes:
- Climate change (Scopes 1, 2, 3, targets, transition planning)
- Forests (deforestation-free supply chain disclosure for soy, palm, timber, cattle, cocoa, coffee, rubber)
- Water security (withdrawals, discharge, basin-level risk)
- Plastics (production, packaging, end-of-life)
- Biodiversity (impact and dependency on nature, TNFD-aligned)
In 2024, CDP folded the five themes into a single unified Corporate Questionnaire. One submission, one score, one set of letter grades, even if you only have material exposure on one theme.
Who actually reads your score
This is the question most first-time responders underestimate. The CDP letter does not just sit on CDP's website. It travels.
| Audience | What they do with your CDP score |
|---|---|
| Institutional investors | Use scores to populate ESG fund screens, voting decisions, and engagement priorities. Many large asset managers cite CDP letters in proxy decisions. |
| Banks and insurers | Reference CDP responses when underwriting climate-related risk in lending and policy pricing. |
| B2B customers | The world's biggest buyers (Walmart, Microsoft, L'Oreal, Tata) require their suppliers to disclose through CDP. Your response is a procurement requirement, not a marketing asset. |
| ESG ratings agencies | MSCI, Sustainalytics, S&P Global, ISS ESG, all ingest CDP data into their corporate ratings. |
| Regulators | The EU CSRD, India BRSR, and UK SDR all have data-point overlap with CDP. Many companies use their CDP response as a starting point for regulatory reporting. |
| Activists and journalists | Public CDP responses are a primary source for greenwashing investigations and rankings. |
What the letters mean to each audience
A is best, F is worst. But the same letter can mean different things in different contexts.
Analogy
Think of the CDP letter like a credit score. A 720 credit score does not mean the same thing to a mortgage lender as it does to a credit card issuer. The mortgage lender wants to see deep history and stability; the credit card issuer cares about recency and utilisation. Same number, different reads. CDP works the same way: an A from a financial services firm means board-level oversight of financed emissions; an A from an FMCG firm means deforestation-free supply chains.
The CDP A-list has roughly 350-400 companies in it on the climate theme each year, out of roughly 22,000 disclosing companies. It is genuinely selective. The companies that make it tend to share a few traits: they have set SBTi-validated targets, they verify their emissions externally, they engage with policy publicly, and they publish detailed transition plans.
A submission is not a one-day exercise
Most first-time responders treat the CDP submission like a tax return: gather data, fill the form, send it. That approach gets you a D or F. The companies that score well treat the submission as a project that runs for three to four months and involves:
- A core sustainability lead who owns the response
- Cross-functional input from finance, operations, procurement, HR, legal
- Board-level sign-off on the final answer
- External verification of emissions data, often under ISO 14064-3
- A defensible audit trail for every number disclosed
Worked example
Tata Steel, India. Their CDP Climate Change disclosure runs to over 90 pages and references their Integrated Annual Report, the Tata Sustainability Group's policies, and external assurance from KPMG. Building this kind of response is not a one-week effort. The team starts in January for a July submission window, and it involves at least 15 functions across the business.
Tesla, USA. Despite being a climate-tech leader, Tesla famously does not disclose to CDP. This is a legitimate strategic choice (CDP is voluntary), but it leaves Tesla without an A-list listing, and ESG raters then proxy their score using less favourable third-party data.
The contrast is instructive: CDP is voluntary, but choosing not to participate is itself a strategic decision that has consequences for how investors and customers perceive you.
The 2026 cycle in brief
The 2026 Corporate Questionnaire opens for submissions in April 2026 and closes mid-July 2026 (exact deadline varies by year and is published by CDP). Scoring runs through autumn, and final letter grades are published in December 2026 or January 2027. The scoring partner network (ERM, South Pole, Keramida, ADEC, etc.) does the actual grading on behalf of CDP.
The 2026 questionnaire is materially the same as 2025 in structure but has refined Leadership criteria across several modules, particularly on transition plan rigour and Scope 3 verification. We will flag specific changes lesson by lesson as they affect each topic.
The practitioner's framing
A useful mental model for the rest of this course: CDP is not a sustainability marketing exercise. It is a structured disclosure of operational facts and decisions, graded against a published rubric. Your job as a responder is not to make your company look good. It is to answer accurately, completely, and in line with what scores points. The grading is mechanical, not subjective. If you understand the rubric, you can score well even with an imperfect underlying performance, as long as you disclose honestly.
The next twelve modules of this course teach you that rubric.
Key Takeaways
- CDP runs the world's largest environmental disclosure system, with five themes (climate, forests, water, plastics, biodiversity) folded into a single unified Corporate Questionnaire
- The CDP letter is read by investors, banks, insurers, B2B customers, ESG raters, and regulators, and travels well beyond the CDP website
- The same letter means different things in different sectors: A in FS means oversight of financed emissions, A in FMCG means deforestation-free supply chains
- A strong submission is a three-to-four-month cross-functional project, not a one-week tax-return exercise
- CDP is voluntary, but non-participation is itself a strategic signal that ends up being noticed by investors and procurement teams
Knowledge Check
Test what you just learned
6 questions · check each one as you go
How many environmental themes are covered by the 2026 unified CDP Corporate Questionnaire?
Which of these audiences read your CDP score?
Select all that apply
What is the typical timeline from submission to score release in a CDP cycle?
True or false: A company that does not respond to CDP at all is treated neutrally by ESG ratings and customers.
Which of these is true about the A-list?
Match each scoring tier to what it broadly means.
Match each item to its pair
Disclosure
Awareness
Management
Leadership