The CDP request
- Who is requesting my environmental data via CDP?
- What information am I being asked to disclose?
- Why should I disclose via CDP?
- I have not been requested to respond. Can I disclose through CDP?
- What is the CDP Activity Classification System (CDP-ACS) and how is it used to allocate sector-specific questions?
Disclosure Cycle & Using the CDP systems
- How do I disclose via CDP?
- What support is provided to help me disclose?
- What is the timeline for responding?
- How does CDP keep companies updated?
- Is there a fee for responding?
- How do I add another user to my account? What type of user permissions exist?
- What does CDP do with my personal data if I become the Main User?
- Can I add a consultant as a user?
- My parent organization already responds; should my subsidiary organization respond too?
Post submission: data and scoring
- What happens to my response?
- Will I receive a score for my questionnaire(s)?
- Will I be penalized for declining to answer all or part of the questionnaire?
- How will my organization be listed on the CDP website?
- When will public responses be available to view?
- How do I view public responses?
- When will my score be available?
- How do I change or update a submitted questionnaire?
Contacting CDP and feedback
- How do I get in touch with my local CDP contact?
- How do I provide feedback to CDP?
- Where can I find the results of CDP consultations?
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The CDP request
Who is requesting my environmental data via CDP?
Investors and large purchasing organizations (“customers”) request environmental information from companies via CDP. This data is used by these stakeholders to inform decisions and drive environmental action.
Companies may receive requests to provide information from:
- investors only;
- customers only; or
- both investors and customers.
In 2020:
- 515+ investors with US$106 trillion in assets are requesting information from over 6,800 companies. The full list of companies being requested to respond to investors is available here.
- over 140 customers with over US$4
trillion in procurement spend are requesting
information from over 11,000 suppliers.
CDP will notify you by email which stakeholders are requesting your response. You can also view these requests via your dashboard.
To read more about the stakeholders who request company disclosure, how they use data, or for more information on how to become a requesting stakeholder, please view our CDP investor signatories and CDP supply chain member pages.
What information am I being asked to disclose?
CDP has three corporate questionnaires; climate change, forests and water security. You may be requested to respond to all, or a combination, of these. The questionnaires provide a framework for companies to provide environmental information to their stakeholders covering governance and policy, risks and opportunity management, environmental targets and strategy, and scenario analysis. The full questionnaires can be viewed here.
The questionnaires are the same for companies responding to requests from investors and customers, allowing companies to provide data to multiple data users at the same time. If you are requested to respond to customers you will be presented with additional questions in the supply chain module where you can report on information specific to your relationship with your customer.
Sector-specific questions
Companies in high-impact sectors, in addition to the general questions, will be presented with questions specific to that sector.
The allocation of sector-specific questions to companies are determined by CDP's Activity Classification System (CDP-ACS). For more information, please see “What is the CDP Activity Classification System (CDP-ACS) and how is it used to allocate sector-specific questions?”
Note that companies will only be scored on their primary questionnaire sector. This means that if more than one set of sector questions applies to a company, not all questions will be scored. Sector specific questions are labelled to indicate which sector(s) they apply to. However, we encourage companies to respond to all questions that apply to them.
Why should I disclose via CDP?
CDP provides the platform for companies to disclose environmental information at the request of their stakeholders. In addition to responding to this request, companies disclosing to their investors and customers through CDP can gain tangible business benefits:
- Protect and improve your company’s reputation
- Boost competitive advantage
- Get ahead of regulation
- Uncover risks and opportunities
- Track and benchmark progress
Disclosing also allows companies to identify opportunities for action. You can find out more via our Organizational Guide for Environmental Action.
To discover more, including how disclosing can boost your competitive advantage, please download our Benefits of Disclosure PowerPoint slide-deck and read case studies on our Why disclose as a company page.
I have not been requested to respond. Can I disclose through CDP?
Yes, all companies are welcome to provide information via CDP’s climate change, forests and water security questionnaires. If you do not receive a request from investors or customers and would like to disclose, please complete this self-selected company (SSC) registration form and send it to [email protected] as early as possible to give us adequate time to process your request and provide you with access to our systems.
If you wish to disclose as a self-selected company (SSC) you will be subject to the administrative fee for responding (see Is there a fee for responding?). Your response(s) will be made available to all of CDP’s investor signatories. Self-selected companies will also receive a score, providing they respond to the full version of the questionnaire ahead of the deadline (August 26, 2020).
Self-selected company responses are not automatically made available by CDP to CDP’s supply chain members. However, if you choose to submit a public response, your response will be accessible via the CDP website, including to interested supply chain members.
What is the CDP Activity Classification System (CDP-ACS) and how is it used to allocate sector-specific questions?
CDP’s Activity Classification System (CDP-ACS) was developed to allocate sector-specific questions to companies from 2018. The CDP-ACS framework categorizes companies by focusing on the activities from which they derive revenue and associating these with the impacts across a company’s value chain from climate change, water security and deforestation.
The CDP Activities are mapped to the questionnaires. A company must earn at least 20% of its revenue in an Activity to be mapped to the relevant sector questionnaire. If no sector questionnaire exists, the company will only be required to respond to the general questions for that theme.
CDP-ACS is a three-tiered system comprised of (from bottom-up) Activity, Activity Group and Industry. See the full list of CDP-ACS.
The sector-based approach allows CDP to make more meaningful assessments of companies' responses, incorporating each sector's characteristics and nuances, resulting in a score that reflects the company's progress in environmental stewardship and enabling better benchmarking against other companies.
Note that companies will only be scored on their primary questionnaire sector. This means that if more than one set of sector questions applies to a company, not all questions will be scored. Sector specific questions are labelled to indicate which sector(s) they apply to. However, we encourage companies to respond to all questions that apply to them.
Disclosure Cycle & Using the CDP systems
How do I disclose through CDP?
Companies must disclose their environmental information via CDP’s Online Response System (ORS). The ORS is set up with each company’s questionnaire(s).
Each company has a dashboard, through which they can access the ORS. The dashboard also contains information regarding which questionnaires an organization is being requested to respond to, and which stakeholders are requesting their information.
If your organization is being requested to respond by investors and/or customers, CDP will notify you by email and will send you your access link to your company’s dashboard and the ORS. You will need to register for a CDP account to access the system. If you already have an account for our website, you can sign in using your existing password.
For further information on the dashboard, and activating, completing and submitting questionnaires in the ORS, please view our guide to Using the disclosure platform.
If your organization has not been requested to respond, please see I have not been requested to respond. Can I disclose through CDP?
What resources are available to help me disclose?
CDP provides a variety of support materials to help organizations disclosing through our platform. Our company guidance page hosts key resources, which you can use whilst preparing your response:
- Questionnaires
Our questionnaires for Climate Change, Forests and Water Security are available to view online or download in word document/PDF.
- Reporting guidance
CDP produces extensive reporting guidance for each questionnaire to provide clarity around questions, terminology and requirements. The reporting guidance contains: introductions to each module, question rationales, connections to other frameworks, requested content, explanation of terms, example responses and additional information.
- Scoring materials
Scoring is closely aligned with CDP’s mission and each of CDP’s corporate questionnaires (climate change, forests and water security) has an individual scoring methodology which applies to companies submitting to investors and customers. CDP is committed to transparency and as such provides the full scoring methodology for every questionnaire. We recommend you review the scoring materials in the following order:
- Scoring Introduction, which provides an overview of CDP scoring, including details of thresholds and scoring eligibility, and should serve as the foundation for submitting your organization’s response(s) for scoring.
- Scoring methodologies for each questionnaire, which outline the number of points available for each question.
- Scoring categories and weighting documents, which illustrate how categories and questions are weighted for scoring at the Management and Leadership levels.
To access the full suite of CDP's resources for responding, including technical notes and webinars, please sign in and select the guidance tool, which you can access by navigating to the grey initials icon in the top right of your screen.
CDP’s questionnaires, guidance and scoring methodology provide a guide towards best practices in environmental management for companies. Our Organizational Guide for Environmental Action roadmap provides a snapshot of actions companies are taking at each stage of this journey towards environmental excellence.
We also host live webinars and workshops designed to aid you with environmental reporting. See our events page
For more in-depth disclosure support on a one-to-one basis, please contact your local office to learn more about our Reporter Services program.
What is the timeline for responding?
CDP works on an annual disclosure cycle. The deadline for submitting 2020 responses to be eligible for scoring is August 26, 2020.
Companies can input information into the 2020 questionnaires via our Online Response System (ORS) from mid-April 2020. The questionnaires for each year made available to view in advance via our guidance page. We recommend organizations start preparing their responses prior to the ORS opening.
For more information, please view our 2020 timeline.
How does CDP keep companies updated?
In addition to providing information on our website, CDP provide updates to company contacts via email, dashboard announcements, newsletters and webinars.
Our newsletter, including the latest guidance and webinars, is sent to disclosing companies on a monthly basis. We also produce a newsletter highlighting our latest blogs and research which you can subscribe to online.
Is there a fee for responding?
CDP is a not-for-profit organization. To deliver our services at the necessary global scale we require a small contribution towards our costs from both companies and investors participating in our system.
There is an annual administrative fee for companies responding to one or more of our investor requests on climate change, forests or water security.
The fee applies to companies listed, incorporated or headquartered in specific countries/regions. Find out more about the fee.
Your company will be exempt from the fee if (1) it falls within one of CDP’s investor samples and it has not submitted a response to any of CDP’s questionnaires in the last three years, or (2) it is responding only to a request from your customer(s). All self-selected companies (i.e. those that have not been requested to respond to an investor request but have chosen to do so independently, irrespective of any customer requests) from the countries/regions where the fee applies are required to pay the administrative fee, whether or not they have responded previously.
You can check if the fee applies to your company when you log in to the CDP dashboard to disclose. If it does apply you will automatically be prompted to pay the fee by credit card or to request an invoice when submitting your response(s) through our Online Response System (ORS).
How do I add another user to my account? What type of user permissions exist?
To add additional users to your account and update permissions, you will need to become the Main User. There are three user types, the different permissions of which are outlined below.
There is no limit to the number of users that can be added to your account.
For more information on the different user roles and how to become the Main User for your organization, please view our Guide to using the disclosure platform.
For more information on how to access your organization’s account please see above How do I disclose through CDP?
| Main User | Contributor | View Only | |
| Responsible for organization’s response(s). Only one contact can be the Main User. | Contributors can collaborate with multiple colleagues, who can all directly access the Online Response System. | This type of user role can be used for sharing the response(s) with colleagues for review or sign off purposes. | |
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Submits questionnaire on behalf of organization:
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Controls access rights on behalf of the organization to organization’s response(s) via the system, or authorizes CDP to make these changes:
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Key contact point for CDP relating to the disclosure period and organization’s response(s):
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Note that there is also a Subsidiary contact role - which is only relevant where a parent company is responding on behalf of a subsidiary company who has also been requested to respond to CDP. Contacts from the subsidiary organization will have this user role and will not have access to the ORS and cannot contribute to the company’s response(s). If a subsidiary contact requires access to the ORS, they can send a request to the Main User to become a contributor.
What does CDP do with my contact details if I become the Main User?
As the Main User, your contact details (name and email) may be stored in CDP’s systems for record management.
If you are no longer the Main User and wish to remove your details from CDP’s systems, please contact [email protected]
Can I add a consultant as a user?
Yes. To give a consultant access to your current questionnaire(s), the Main User can set them up as a Contributor on behalf of their organization via their dashboard. This will give them the ability to edit but not to submit the questionnaire. The Main User will need to make the actual submission themselves.
Please note that CDP expects the Main User for a questionnaire to be from the requested company. The Main User must not be a person external to the organization, such as a consultant.
For more information on the different user roles and how to become the Main User for your organization, please see How do I add another user to my account? What type of user permissions exist? and view our guide to Using the disclosure platform.
My parent organization already responds; should my (subsidiary) organization respond too?
If the subsidiary’s data is included in the parent organization’s response to CDP, the subsidiary would not need to respond.
This inclusion would have been determined by the parent organization’s approach to establishing its reporting boundary. See the reporting guidance for C0.5, W0.6/W0.6 and F0.4/F0.5.
- For climate change and water security disclosures, CDP’s reporting guidance asks companies to be guided by the GHG Protocol when determining their reporting boundary - according to equity share, financial control or operational control, and when consolidating data from different entities. The GHG Protocol explains the concept of boundaries and offers extensive guidance. The approach to a boundary, identified in answer to question C0.5 of the climate change questionnaire and W0.5/W0.6 for water security, should be used consistently when respond to all questions.
- For the forests questionnaire, the parent company establishes its reporting boundary according to the value chain for each commodity it is disclosing about (F0.4/F0.5). If the subsidiary produces/uses or sells the commodity it would fall within that reporting boundary.
If the subsidiary organization falls outside the parent reporting boundary, it may disclose to CDP separately.
We recommend contacting your parent organization to confirm whether or not its next CDP response(s) will include data from subsidiaries.
Please get in touch with your local CDP contact to discuss your options.
Post submission: data and scoring
What happens to my response?
When submitting your response to the questionnaire(s) in the Online Response System (ORS), you may choose to make your response public or non-public. This choice determines how CDP will handle the data in your response. Your response may also be scored (for more information on scoring see Will I receive a score for my questionnaire(s)?).
Please note that the below is a summary and companies should refer to the relevant Terms for Responding of what may happen to your response after submission. The Terms can be found via the questionnaires and reporting guidance available on the guidance pages. The Terms are also available through the ‘Submit your response’ page of the questionnaire in the ORS.
Public responses:
- Shared with the investors and/or customers requesting your response
- Made available via the CDP website
- Shared with scoring partners for the purposes of scoring your response
- Response/information published by CDP or third parties in reports
Non-public responses:
- Shared with the investors and/or customers requesting your response
- Not made available on the CDP website*
- Shared with scoring partners for the purposes of scoring your response
- Data only published in CDP reports if anonymized
*Note, for companies requested by investors, there will be a note of your submission status on the CDP website (see How will my organization be listed on the CDP website? for more information).
Any data submitted in the supply chain module is always private between the responding company and the customer(s) requesting the data, regardless of whether the response as a whole is public or non-public.
To find out more about how investors and customers use your data, please visit our investor and supply chain pages.
| Public response | Non-public response | |
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Made available via CDP website Note that data shared via the supply chain module is never shared publicly |
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| Shared with CDP scoring partners for scoring purposes |
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| Response/information in response published by CDP or third parties in reports |
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Only in CDP reports if data has been anonymized |
Will I receive a score for my questionnaire(s)?
Scoring is closely aligned with CDP’s mission – CDP works with market forces to motivate companies to disclose their impacts on the environment and natural resources and take action to reduce negative impacts.
Companies responding to the full version of the CDP questionnaires will receive a score if they respond by the deadline of August 26, 2020.
Companies responding to the minimum version of the questionnaire will only receive a score if they are submitting a response to customers and respond by the deadline. For more details, please refer to the Scoring Introduction (PDF).
Please note that if you have been requested to disclose and do not submit a response, you will receive an ‘F’. ‘F’ indicates a failure to provide CDP with sufficient information to be evaluated and is not a reflection of your environmental stewardship.
CDP provides score reports following score release, and there are various feedback call options on offer. To find out more, please contact your local CDP office.
Each of CDP’s corporate questionnaires (climate change, forests and water security) has an individual scoring methodology which applies to companies submitting to investors and customers. CDP is committed to transparency and as such provides the full scoring methodology for every questionnaire online.
Before completing the corporate questionnaires, we strongly recommend you read the Scoring Introduction document which contains CDP’s scoring eligibility information, the relevant scoring methodology, and the reporting guidance for the questionnaire.
Will I be penalized for declining to answer all or part of the questionnaire?
Organizations are encouraged to provide as much information as possible and are incentivized to do so in the scoring methodology at Disclosure level. Providing partial information is better than not responding at all and any response will be useful for the stakeholders requesting and using your response.
Using the questionnaire(s) as a framework to guide internal data collection and strategies will allow you to build your response year-on-year, and assist in setting goals.
CDP offers a minimum version of the questionnaires for smaller companies and those responding for the first time. Please see Will I receive a score for my questionnaire? for more details.
If you have been requested to participate and do not submit a response, you will be noted as “No Response” or “’Declined to Participate’ to your requesting stakeholders and receive an ‘F’. ‘F’ indicates a failure to provide us with sufficient information to be evaluated and is not a reflection of your environmental stewardship. This may also be communicated to investors, customers and other stakeholders through our reports, digital platforms and data partners. See How will my organization be listed on CDP’s website?
For more information on CDP scoring, please refer to the Scoring Introduction (PDF) and scoring methodologies for your questionnaire(s) and Will I receive a score for my questionnaire(s)?
How will my organization be listed on the CDP website?
Companies requested to submit by investors
- Companies who are requested to submit a response to investors will be listed on the CDP website. The full list of companies being requested to respond to investors is available here.
- Company scores are made publicly available, regardless of whether the response itself is public or non-public. For companies responding to a questionnaire for the first time, CDP offers the option to keep this score private for the first year. Please contact your local CDP office to discuss this option.
- Please note that if you have been requested to participate and do not submit a response, you will be noted as “Declined to participate” or “No response” and will receive an “F”. For more information, please see Will I be penalized for declining to answer all or part of the questionnaire?
- If your data is being included in another organization’s response, you will be noted as “See Another”, indicating that stakeholders should refer to another organization’s response, and your score will reflect that of the other organization.
Companies requested to submit to customers
- Unless a company responds and chooses to make their response public, we will not disclose on our website that a relationship exists between a company and any of our supply chain members.
- Company scores will not be made publicly available, regardless of whether the response itself is public or non-public (unless your company scores an A).
When will public responses be available to view?
Public responses will be published on the CDP website in: Date to be confirmed
How do I view public responses?
You will need to create a user account in order to view public responses via the search and response function on our website.
When will my score be available?
Scores will be available in: Date to be confirmed
How do I change or update a submitted questionnaire?
After submission, your response will be in “view only” format. You may amend a response you have submitted before the deadline (26 August 2020). To do so you must notify us that you wish to amend your response by 20 August 2020 and you must resubmit your response by the Deadline for your response to be eligible for scoring. From 21 August 2020, amendments to submitted responses can only be made by CDP staff and at our discretion and we may charge a fee for making them. Most amendments to your response will be made from 2 November 2020 at the earliest.
Please note that the final date for requesting an amendment is 30 November 2020 and any changes you request to your submitted response from 21 August 2020 may not be reflected in any score, report, data product or other analysis or use of your response. Please email [email protected] for more information about amending your response.
Amendments can only be processed for a defined period of time after submission. Once this date has passed, it will not be possible to amend submitted questionnaires in our systems. It is not possible for historic questionnaires to be amended.
An amendment fee may be charged for amending your questionnaire after submission. Please see CDP’s corporate response amendment policy, and CDP’s amendment form, for more information on the fees and process. Once completed, please email your amendment form to [email protected].
Contacting CDP and feedback
How do I get in touch with my local CDP contact?
CDP operates in a number of locations globally. Please find the Disclosure contact details of your local office on our Contact page.
How can I provide feedback to CDP?
CDP welcomes feedback from companies disclosing via our platform.
To provide feedback on the content of our questionnaires and supporting materials please use our technical feedback form. Note that from time to time CDP holds public consultations on our questionnaires, details of which are made available to stakeholders via our consultation page.
For anything else, please use our general feedback form.
You will not receive a reply to your feedback, but please be assured that all form submissions are reviewed to allow for continuous improvement. However, if you represent a responding organization and would like to request a response, please get in touch with your local CDP contact.
Where can I find the results of CDP consultations?
Visit our consultation page for more information on our most recent questionnaire consultation.