Key takeaway
CDP does not score your response with one big number. It scores you across four levels, in a fixed order, where each level has its own bar. This lesson shows you how the four levels work, how points stack, and why a strong response in the wrong order can still earn you a low grade.
The four scoring levels
CDP grades every response on a ladder. Your final letter, anywhere from D minus up to A, is decided by how high you climb on that ladder.
The four rungs are:
- Disclosure - Did you fill the question in?
- Awareness - Did you show that you understand the issue?
- Management - Are you actually doing something about it?
- Leadership - Are you operating at best practice?
Every question on the questionnaire is graded against this same four-level structure. Some questions only score Disclosure. Some go all the way to Leadership. The framework is identical, the bars get higher.
Analogy
Think of CDP's ladder like a martial arts belt system. White belt means you showed up to class. Yellow belt means you understand the moves. Green belt means you can apply them in practice. Black belt means you are operating at expert level. You cannot wear a green belt without first earning yellow, and you cannot wear black without green. The colours are sequential, not parallel.
The gating rule
Here is the rule that catches most first-time responders by surprise.
You cannot earn points at a higher level until you have earned full points at the level below it.
If you skip a Disclosure point on a question, you forfeit every Awareness, Management, and Leadership point on that same question, no matter how strong your answer is at those higher levels.
A company that writes a beautiful, world-class transition plan but forgets to tick a single Disclosure-level checkbox earns zero points for that plan. The grader does not even read the rest.
Worked example
A consumer goods company writes a detailed Scope 3 emissions inventory across all 15 categories, with a target verified by SBTi, and a board-approved transition plan. But on Question 1.4, they leave the "consolidation approach" cell blank.
Result: their Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 disclosures are now ungraded. The grader cannot interpret their emissions data without knowing the consolidation approach, so the entire emissions section drops to zero. One blank cell, hundreds of points lost.
How points add up to a letter grade
CDP rolls up the points across all your scored questions into a numerator and a denominator, separately for each of the four levels. So at the end of the questionnaire you have eight numbers: a Disclosure score, an Awareness score, a Management score, a Leadership score, each as a fraction of the maximum available.
Those four percentages decide your letter.
| Final letter | What it broadly means |
|---|---|
| A | You scored at Leadership level across most of the questionnaire |
| A minus | You operated at Leadership but with a few gaps |
| B / B minus | You are managing the issue, but not yet leading |
| C / C minus | You are aware of the issue, but not yet managing it |
| D / D minus | You disclosed the data, but did not show awareness |
| F | You did not disclose enough to be scored |
A common misunderstanding is that "C means below average." It does not. C means your response showed Awareness across the questionnaire. That is already further along than most companies that disclose for the first time.
The non-disclosure penalty
If you leave a question blank, CDP does not award zero. CDP awards a negative impact, called the non-disclosure denominator. This is a way of saying: "You had a chance to score points here, and you forfeited all of them, and we will hold that against your final percentage."
Formula
For a typical question: Points earned = numerator at each level Points possible = denominator at each level Non-disclosure = Awarded zero points across the full denominator at every level
Concretely, on a Governance question worth up to 5 Disclosure points and 1 Awareness point, leaving it blank costs you the full possible 19 / 5 / 6 / 2.5 across the four levels. Even if your overall response is strong elsewhere, those forfeited points lower your final letter.
The practical rule: always answer something. Even a partial answer scores higher than a blank.
How questions are weighted
Not every question carries the same weight. Some questions are worth one Disclosure point and one Awareness point. Some are worth a full eight points across the four levels. Sector-specific questions can carry significantly more weight for that sector. Questions about your most material themes (climate, water, forests, etc.) carry weight in those theme scores specifically.
This means three companies in the same sector with identical Disclosure rates can end up with very different letters, depending on which questions they did and did not score on. A company that gets 90 percent Disclosure but skips the high-weight Governance and Strategy questions can grade lower than a company that gets 75 percent Disclosure but covers the high-weight ones well.
You will see the label "Not scored" on certain questions, especially context-setting ones in the Introduction module. CDP uses these to gather information needed to interpret your scored responses, but does not award points for them directly. Do not skip them. They control which other questions get presented to you, and an unanswered context question can make a downstream question impossible to score.
A worked example
Imagine a mid-sized manufacturing company submitting for the first time.
Worked example
Company: Acme Castings Ltd, 2,000 employees, Indian operations.
They complete every Disclosure-level cell across the questionnaire. Cleanly.
- Disclosure result: 95 percent. Strong.
They explain the rationale behind their answers in 60 percent of cases, demonstrating awareness of climate risk. They skip the rationale on the others.
- Awareness result: 60 percent. Weak.
They have not yet implemented a transition plan, set targets, or built scenario analysis capability.
- Management result: 15 percent.
- Leadership result: 5 percent.
Final grade: D. Despite a near-perfect Disclosure score, their letter is held back by the gating rule. They have to lift Awareness before any of the higher-level points count. The path to a B for them is not "do more Leadership things." It is "explain the why behind every answer."
This is the most counter-intuitive lesson for new responders. Going up one letter is rarely about doing more things. It is about properly explaining the things you are already doing.
Practice calculation
A company earns 8 of 10 Disclosure points on a question, 0 of 1 Awareness points, and skips Management and Leadership entirely. The Management and Leadership routes both required full Awareness as a prerequisite. How many points has the company earned on this question across all four levels combined?
Key Takeaways
- CDP scores responses on four sequential levels: Disclosure, Awareness, Management, Leadership
- You cannot earn points at a higher level without first earning full points at the level below
- A blank cell does not score zero, it triggers a non-disclosure penalty that lowers the final percentage
- Questions are not equally weighted, and sector-specific or thematic questions can dominate the score
- The path from a low letter to a higher one is usually about explaining your existing actions, not doing entirely new ones
Knowledge Check
Test what you just learned
6 questions · check each one as you go
What does the gating rule in CDP's scoring system mean?
What happens if you leave a question blank?
True or false: A company with 95 percent Disclosure-tier completion will always receive at least a B grade.
Which is true of the non-disclosure penalty?
Which questions are 'Not scored' by CDP?
Match each letter grade to its broad meaning.
Match each item to its pair
A
B
C
D