A customer asks your company to disclose through CDP. The request lands with the sustainability lead, compliance owner, or operations team, alongside everything else they already manage. Now someone needs to work out what CDP requires, where the data lives, and who can approve the response.
Start by clarifying the request. Does the customer expect a completed submission, a specific score, or evidence of progress against an environmental target? Those expectations should shape your work plan.
The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) provides a structured way to share environmental information. For a company responding for the first time, the immediate job is to assemble an accurate, supportable response and understand what the requesting organization needs from it.
What is the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)?
CDP, founded in 2000 as the Carbon Disclosure Project, is a global nonprofit that operates an environmental disclosure system. Companies, cities, states, and regions use it to report information about their environmental impacts and how they manage them. Its purpose extends beyond carbon emissions to supporting informed decisions and progress toward a sustainable economy. CDP here means the environmental disclosure organization, not customer data platform software, which shares the acronym.
Today, the organization uses the name CDP. Its scope now extends beyond carbon: the questionnaire also covers forests, water, biodiversity, plastics and, beginning in 2026, ocean.
Companies answer an annual questionnaire. CDP then shares the answers with the organizations that asked for them, mainly customers and financial institutions. Those users include purchasing organizations and financial institutions seeking information from companies. CDP's Supply Chain program allows participating customers to request supplier disclosures.
CDP's reach includes major public companies as well as smaller suppliers. Over 22,000 companies disclosed through CDP in 2025, representing more than half of global market capitalization.
Why would a customer ask your company to disclose?
Purchasing organizations use CDP to collect information across their supply chain and identify environmental risks. A customer may need supplier data to understand emissions, evaluate dependencies, or support its own environmental reporting.
For your team, the first step is to translate that request into a defined deliverable. Confirm:
- Which company or legal entity needs to respond.
- Which environmental issues the request covers.
- Whether the customer expects participation, a score, or specific actions.
- Whether the customer has an internal deadline ahead of CDP's deadline.
- Who will approve the information before submission.
Avoid assuming that every request carries the same commercial consequence. Ask your account owner or procurement contact to confirm how the disclosure will be used. If a customer has stated a supplier requirement, document it. If expectations are unclear, resolve them before committing to a score improvement project.
Environmental transparency also means explaining limitations. To support stakeholder trust, show where your information comes from, what it covers, and which gaps remain. A clear explanation gives the reader something concrete to evaluate.
What does the CDP questionnaire cover?
CDP's full corporate questionnaire integrates several environmental issues into one response. Its 2026 coverage includes climate change, forests, water, biodiversity, plastics, and ocean. The questions presented to your company depend on its questionnaire setup and applicable environmental issues.
Climate change and greenhouse gas emissions
Climate disclosure brings together information on greenhouse gas emissions, governance, risks, targets, and the company's response to climate change. An emissions total is one part of that picture.
Carbon accounting provides the measurement foundation. Under the GHG Protocol, emissions are organized into three scopes:
- Scope 1: Direct emissions from sources your organization owns or controls, such as fuel burned in company vehicles or boilers.
- Scope 2: Indirect emissions from generating purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling.
- Scope 3: Other indirect emissions across the upstream and downstream value chain, such as purchased goods, transportation, and use of sold products.
When assembling your carbon footprint, retain the reporting period, organizational boundary, calculation methods, and supporting records. Make it possible for a reviewer to trace the reported GHG emissions back to the underlying information.
Forests and deforestation
CDP's forests questions address environmental dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities associated with forest risk commodities. These include timber products, cattle products, soy, palm oil, coffee, cocoa, and rubber. The questions examine issues linked to deforestation and ecosystem conversion.
If these commodities are relevant to your business, involve procurement early. Start with a list of products, sourcing records, supplier contacts, and existing policies. Identify which information is available and which requests require supplier follow-up.
Water security and other environmental issues
Water security disclosure considers how organizations depend on water and address water-related impacts and risks. Biodiversity, plastics, and ocean questions broaden the assessment of the company's environmental footprint. CDP expanded its questionnaire to ocean for the first time in 2026.
Do not assume that a completed emissions inventory answers every environmental question. Review your assigned questions before setting the data collection plan.
How do CDP scores work?
CDP scores reflect the quality and maturity of the company's disclosure and environmental management. They are based on the response against the applicable scoring methodology, rather than an absolute comparison of environmental performance.
The main scoring levels are:
- D/D-: Disclosure, assessing the completeness of reporting.
- C/C-: Awareness, assessing understanding of environmental issues.
- B/B-: Management, recognizing action and management processes.
- A/A-: Leadership, recognizing best practice and transparency.
For the full questionnaire, companies must meet applicable points thresholds and essential criteria to progress between levels. Strong answers in one area do not automatically compensate for missing essential requirements.
In 2026, CDP scores the full questionnaire separately for climate change, forests, and water security. Biodiversity, plastics, and ocean remain unscored. The SME questionnaire receives a climate change score only. From 2026, SMEs can reach an A score; the 2025 ceiling was B.
CDP also publishes an A List recognizing qualifying leadership-level companies. Treat that as a longer-term objective if it fits your program. For a first response, establish accurate reporting and a manageable improvement plan before making external score commitments.
How to prepare for CDP reporting
Use the following workflow to organize the submission. Assign one response owner while keeping technical review with the people responsible for the underlying information.
1. Confirm your request and questionnaire
Review the requesting organizations and complete the setup process in the CDP Portal. Use the current reporting guidance and confirm whether your company will complete the full corporate or SME questionnaire.
In 2026 the SME questionnaire is open to companies with up to 1,000 employees and up to US$250 million in revenue, unless RE100 has requested their disclosure. Confirm the current thresholds in the CDP Portal, since they change.
2. Build a data collection plan
Map each required topic to an owner. Finance may hold purchasing records. Facilities may hold utility and fuel information. Procurement may own supplier records. Leadership may need to approve governance and strategy statements.
For each information request, record the reporting period, format, evidence location, owner, and due date. Give contributors specific instructions. “Provide monthly electricity consumption for each included facility” is more actionable than “send sustainability data.”
Separate missing information from information that exists but needs checking. Those are different tasks and should have different owners.
3. Validate your emissions inventory
Review the scope and consistency of your inventory before copying totals into the response. Check units, coverage, assumptions, and calculations. Investigate changes from the previous reporting period and keep an explanation of any revisions.
Use the relevant GHG Protocol standards and guidance for your inventory. Its Corporate Standard supports corporate emissions accounting, while its Scope 3 Standard addresses value chain emissions.
Do not make an unsupported claim to fill a gap. Follow the reporting guidance for estimates, exclusions, and explanations where applicable.
4. Connect climate risks to business strategy
Climate risks can arise from physical impacts, such as damage or supply disruption, and from the transition to a lower-carbon economy, including policy, technology, and market changes. CDP's climate disclosure approach connects these issues with governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics.
Bring the relevant business owners into the assessment. Ask which operations, suppliers, or markets could be affected, what the company has evaluated, and which actions it has actually taken.
When describing a climate transition plan, distinguish approved measures from proposals. Identify accountable owners, milestones, and the evidence available to support progress.
5. Describe targets accurately
Record target boundaries, baseline years, time horizons, and progress. Keep a proposed target separate from an approved target, and distinguish both from an externally validated target.
The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) develops standards, tools, and guidance for setting science-based targets. Target validation is delivered through SBTi Services. A CDP submission and SBTi validation serve different purposes.
If you report a target as validated, check its actual status and ensure the wording matches the supporting documentation.
6. Review the response as one connected document
Check that emissions totals, targets, organizational boundaries, and narrative answers agree. Compare claims across sections and resolve contradictions before approval.
Review the current scoring methodology alongside the reporting guidance. CDP generally scores information provided in the response; external links and attachments are excluded unless the methodology specifically allows them.
Keep a record of who approved the submission and retain the final response. After receiving the score, use the category feedback to prioritize work for the next cycle.
How CDP relates to other reporting frameworks
CDP brings information associated with several reporting frameworks and standards into its questionnaire. Understanding each tool's role helps your team reuse information appropriately.
The GHG Protocol supports emissions measurement. CDP provides a disclosure channel. SBTi supports science-based target setting and validation. These activities can share a data foundation while requiring different outputs.
CDP's climate questionnaire aligns with IFRS S2, issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). It also retains alignment with recommendations from the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Although the TCFD has been disbanded and the ISSB now monitors climate disclosure, its four-pillar structure remains embedded in climate reporting.
CDP's questionnaire is partially aligned with relevant Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards. CDP also provides mapping to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards, including climate disclosures associated with CSRD reporting. These mappings identify overlap; they should not be treated as proof that a CDP response satisfies every requirement of another framework.
Build a shared evidence base, then review each output against its own requirements. That approach lets your team reuse verified information without overlooking differences in scope or format.
Make your next CDP disclosure manageable
Before starting, define what a successful response means for this cycle. Set priorities around the customer's request, available evidence, and the work your team can complete and approve.
For a team that needs help running the process, Greenplaces provides CDP disclosure support covering requirements mapping, evidence compilation, response drafting, submission, and scorecard analysis. Its service covers climate, water, and forest disclosures.
If your customer has asked you to disclose, bring the request to a Greenplaces strategy call. Start with the required submission, the information you already have, and the gaps that need attention.