CDP guidelines: how to disclose in 2026

A customer has asked your company to disclose through CDP. Before your sustainability or compliance team starts writing answers, you need to confirm who requested the disclosure and whether you will complete the full corporate or SME questionnaire. From there, you will need to gather reliable data, and understand what submission actually requires. Following CDP guidelines means using the current questionnaire, reporting instructions, and scoring materials together.

CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, operates an environmental disclosure system used to share information about a business’s climate impacts, risks, and actions. For a company responding to a customer or investor request, the practical goal is a complete, accurate response that addresses the request and explains the company’s environmental performance. Environmental transparency starts with giving readers enough information to understand both your progress and your limitations.

This guide covers corporate CDP reporting, including the full and SME routes. It explains how to prepare, use the CDP platform, and manage the 2026 disclosure cycle without confusing questionnaire completion with scoring eligibility.

Start with the current CDP guidelines

Use the CDP portal’s built-in reporting and scoring guidance as you enter your responses. Review the instructions for each question alongside the data you provide. For help understanding how answers are assessed, read our guide to CDP’s question-level scoring methodology. CDP’s Disclosure Hub and How to Disclose page offer additional resources when you need them.

Prepare and review your answers directly in the portal. Assign questions to the appropriate internal owners and use the reporting instructions, scoring criteria, and definitions displayed with each question to check their responses.

Select the question’s book icon to open instructions covering requested content, definitions, conditional logic, and scoring. Some guidance applies to a particular column, so review the column-specific instructions as well as the overall question.

Confirm your reporting route and questionnaire

First identify the request behind the submission. Companies may receive requests from customers, capital markets signatories, banks, or initiatives. A company volunteering to disclose to capital markets participates as a self-selected company, also called an SSC. In the portal, this is managed through a “CDP Capital Markets – Self-Selected” request, which shares the response with capital markets signatories.

Returning users should check existing account access. New users may receive an invitation link , depending on their situation. Confirm that your account is connected to the correct organization before creating another registration.

Enter your company’s annual revenue and headcount during questionnaire setup. The portal uses this information to determine whether you are eligible for the SME questionnaire or must complete the full corporate questionnaire. If you select the SME questionnaire, complete it using the guidance built into that questionnaire.

Check the activities recorded for your company. CDP-ACS, the CDP Activity Classification System, helps determine sector-specific content by classifying revenue-generating activities. An inaccurate classification can lead your team to prepare the wrong sector information. Review it with someone who understands your business operations.

Next, confirm the environmental issues presented. All companies are asked climate change questions. The full questionnaire also includes supplementary plastics questions and biodiversity content. Forests and water security requirements depend on factors such as requests, industry impacts, self-assessment, or opting in.

Understand what changed for 2026

Avoid carrying forward last year’s answers without checking this year’s content. The integrated questionnaire allows companies to report across environmental issues, but the questions presented and scoring treatment vary by route.

Full corporate disclosure

Ocean disclosure was introduced in 2026. CDP also expanded forest scoring to include rubber, cocoa, and coffee, alongside the previously scored forest risk commodities. Companies sourcing or producing relevant commodities should review the applicable requirements for deforestation, traceability, and targets.

Plastics, biodiversity, and ocean remain unscored in 2026. Unscored content can still matter to data users, so decide who will supply and review that information rather than leave it outside your preparation plan.

SME disclosure

The SME questionnaire adds optional forests and water security modules in 2026. These cover foundational information such as commodity sourcing and water accounting. Their inclusion does not create separate SME forests or water scores this year.

The SME scoring approach also introduces leadership scoring and an SME A score in 2026. Smaller businesses should assess their response against the current SME scoring materials, including the requirements for moving between levels.

Prepare data your reviewers can trace

Prepare your emissions inventory for Module 7, Environmental Performance – Climate Change, in the full corporate questionnaire. This module covers emissions methodologies, exclusions, inventory figures, energy use, and targets. Maintain an inventory management plan that documents your reporting boundary, data sources, calculation methods, responsibilities, and review process so your team can explain how the figures were produced.

Use that plan to organize the records behind your inventory and resolve data gaps before entering your figures. Greenplaces’ carbon accounting services can help your team build the emissions inventory used in your CDP submission.

Report your Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions in the applicable questionnaire fields, following the instructions for each question. Identify the standard, protocol, or methodology used to collect activity data and calculate emissions; CDP provides several options, including the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064-1. For Scope 2, prepare both location-based and market-based figures where applicable, and explain any inability to report either figure as requested.

Check that the emissions figures entered in CDP match your underlying inventory and supporting energy records. If organizational boundaries or methods changed, prepare an explanation and check whether historical information needs adjustment under the relevant guidance.

For science-based targets, distinguish an internal ambition from a target validated by SBTi. Record the target’s scope, baseline, timeframe, validation status, and progress. Apply the same discipline to climate transition plans: describe approved actions, ownership, and available evidence rather than imply a plan is implemented because it has been announced.

Read CDP scoring before drafting

CDP scoring evaluates the response against a published methodology. The full questionnaire uses four levels: disclosure, awareness, management, and leadership. These describe increasing reporting and environmental management maturity.

Review the relevant essential criteria early. For the full questionnaire, these are requirements for achieving a scoring level. Strong answers in one area cannot necessarily compensate for failing a required criterion elsewhere. The A List represents recognized leadership, but a desired grade should never determine what your company claims.

Create a gap assessment with three practical categories: information already available, information requiring clarification, and actions that have not been implemented. The last category needs a management decision.

CDP generally scores information contained in the response itself. For questions that request supporting documents, such as an environmental policy, provide the document and check the question-specific scoring criteria. Otherwise, external links and attachments are not a substitute for the information requested in the answer. Put the requested explanation in the appropriate answer rather than expect a scorer to find it in a linked sustainability report.

Review the response as a connected record. Governance answers should align with the owners named in risk management and targets. Reported reductions should agree with the inventory. Describe limitations precisely when the evidence is incomplete.

Use framework alignment to organize evidence

CDP’s questionnaire aligns with several reporting frameworks and standards. These include the International Sustainability Standards Board, or ISSB, and its IFRS S2 standard, as well as TNFD and GRI. CDP provides mappings to help organizations understand those connections.

Use those mappings to identify reusable information. If your team has prepared TCFD-based disclosures, review them against the current CDP questions before transferring content. If your organization also reports under CSRD, assess the relevant European Sustainability Reporting Standards requirements separately.

A useful internal crosswalk records the CDP question, related framework requirement, evidence owner, and source document. Reusing evidence can simplify preparation, but your reviewer should confirm that its period, boundary, and level of detail match the destination question. Framework alignment does not make different submissions interchangeable.

Manage fees and submission responsibilities

Confirm the submission lead early. This is the person authorized to submit the organization’s response. Other contributors can prepare content, but your process should reserve time for the lead to complete the final steps.

Check whether your disclosure requires an admin fee in the portal. Companies requested only through CDP’s supply chain program are generally exempt. Companies with a capital markets request, including self-selected companies, generally pay an admin fee and can review the Foundation option and any other tiers available to them in the portal. Requests only from banks, private markets, or RE100 are also generally exempt.

CDP’s operational guidance requires payment, an invoice generated in the portal, or selection of “No fee payable” for an exempt organization before submission. Confirm the option shown for your company and follow any invoice payment terms.

Before submitting, review mandatory questions, incomplete sections, accepted requests, and response publicity.

Keep the two deadlines separate

For 2026, the standard scoring deadline was September 16 at 11:59 p.m. International Dateline West. CDP’s current operational guidance places the final response deadline in the week commencing October 26.

The full 2026 disclosure cycle runs on these milestones:

Once the standard scoring deadline has passed, companies can still submit or amend responses within the remaining disclosure window, but edits after the scoring deadline are not scored under the standard process. Check your portal and any separately approved arrangements before assuming scoring eligibility.

For future cycles, set an internal deadline earlier than CDP’s cutoff. Allow time for data review, leadership approval, billing, and submission. Archive the submitted response and confirmation so your team has a reliable record for the next cycle.

Build a manageable CDP reporting process

Start with the request, the available evidence, and the work your team can realistically own. External support may help when you need additional capacity for data preparation, interpretation, or submission management. Define those responsibilities before choosing a provider.

CDP’s directory of accredited solutions providers covers services such as reporting support, software, targets, and verification. Match the provider’s scope to your actual gaps. Accreditation does not replace your responsibility to supply accurate information.

Greenplaces offers managed CDP disclosure support for climate, water, and forests, including questionnaire preparation, evidence development, response structuring, and submission support. Bring your customer request, prior response, and current data to a strategy conversation to establish the work needed and the responsibilities your team will retain.