CDP, explained in plain language
In this article, we explore complete and its importance for corporate sustainability management.
CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, is the world’s most established environmental disclosure system. Created in 2000 in London, it runs an annual questionnaire process where companies, cities, states, and regions report environmental data to investors, customers, and regulators. By 2025 more than 24,800 companies, representing over two thirds of global market capitalization, were responding through the platform.
Unlike a regulation, CDP is voluntary at the company level, although in practice it is far from optional. Investors managing more than 130 trillion dollars in assets request CDP data, and large buyers ask their suppliers to respond as a condition of staying in the supply chain. If a customer like Walmart, L’Oreal, or Microsoft sends you a CDP request, declining to answer is a commercial decision, not just a sustainability one.
At Dcycle we work with companies that disclose to CDP every year, and the most common misconception we see is treating CDP as a one off report. It is not. It is a continuous data discipline that begins with primary energy, fuel, water, and land use data, and ends with a public score that benchmarks you against your sector.
The three CDP questionnaires
CDP runs three separate disclosures, and a company may need to respond to one, two, or all three depending on its activity:
- Climate Change: greenhouse gas emissions across Scope 1, 2, and 3, climate risk and opportunity assessment, transition plans, and governance. This is the most widely used questionnaire.
- Water Security: water withdrawal, consumption, and discharge, water risk in operations and value chain, basin level context, and water related targets.
- Forests: exposure to forest risk commodities such as timber, palm oil, soy, cattle products, rubber, cocoa, and coffee, including traceability and deforestation free sourcing.
In 2024 CDP merged the three questionnaires into a single corporate questionnaire with modular sections. This means you fill in only the modules that apply to your business, but the underlying methodology and scoring for each environmental topic remains separate.
Who needs to respond?
There are three pathways into CDP, and most companies enter through the first two.
The investor request pathway covers listed companies whose shareholders ask for disclosure. CDP sends the request on behalf of signatory investors. The supply chain request pathway covers any supplier whose customer participates in CDP Supply Chain. This is how most mid sized industrial, food, and consumer goods companies first encounter CDP. Finally, self selected disclosure is open to any organisation that wants to publish data even without being formally requested.
A practical rule we share with clients: if your company sells to a multinational with public climate targets, expect a CDP request within two to three years. Preparing in advance is cheaper than scrambling in May when the questionnaire opens.
Timeline you should know
The CDP cycle is predictable and tight. The questionnaire typically opens in early April and closes in early June, with public scores published between November and February of the following year. Supply chain responses follow a slightly later deadline, usually around the end of July, but the data window is the same.
This compressed timeline is the single biggest reason companies score below their potential. Eight weeks is not enough to collect Scope 3 emissions, validate water withdrawal by site, or trace soy back to the municipality of origin. The work that determines your score happens in January, February, and March, not in May.
How CDP scoring works
CDP grades responses from D minus to A across four progressive bands: Disclosure, Awareness, Management, and Leadership. Reaching the A list, the highest band, requires more than complete answers. It requires verified data, science based targets, scenario analysis, board level oversight, and supplier engagement programs. In 2024 only around 350 companies worldwide reached the A list across the three themes combined.
A common pattern we see at Dcycle is companies stuck at C or B level not because their environmental performance is weak, but because they cannot evidence it. The scoring rewards traceability, third party verification, and consistency across reporting cycles. Two companies with identical emissions can score very differently if one has audited inventories and the other estimates from spend.
How CDP connects to other frameworks
CDP is not isolated from the broader reporting ecosystem. Its methodology aligns with the GHG Protocol for emissions, the Task Force on Climate related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) for governance and risk, and increasingly with CSRD and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards. Many of the Scope 1, 2, and 3 datapoints required by ESRS E1 are the same ones CDP asks for. Companies that build their inventory once and reuse it across frameworks save significant time.
This is exactly the architecture Dcycle is built on: collect primary data once, map it to multiple frameworks, and reuse the same evidence across CDP, CSRD, carbon footprint audits, and supplier requests.
Practical first steps
If 2026 is your first CDP cycle, focus on three priorities before April:
- Confirm your boundary: identify all entities, sites, and joint ventures that fall under your operational or financial control. Inconsistent boundaries between years cost points.
- Lock down Scope 1 and 2: stationary combustion, mobile combustion, fugitive emissions, purchased electricity, heat, and steam. These are non negotiable for any climate response.
- Start Scope 3 mapping: even a screening level estimate covering categories 1, 4, 6, and 7 puts you ahead of most first time respondents.
For water, the equivalent first step is mapping withdrawal by source and by site using a water risk tool such as the WRI Aqueduct atlas. For forests, it is a commodity exposure inventory.
Where Dcycle fits
Companies using Dcycle automate the data collection layer that historically eats the most time before a CDP submission. The platform connects to ERPs, utility portals, fleet systems, and supplier surveys, calculates emissions in line with the GHG Protocol, and exports answers in CDP compatible formats. If you want to see how this works for your specific sector, request a demo.
CDP is no longer just an investor exercise. It is the de facto language large buyers use to qualify suppliers and regulators use to benchmark progress. Treating it as a serious data project, not a yearly form, is what separates A list companies from the rest.