Guidance & questionnaires
We understand that disclosing through CDP, whether for the first time or as an experienced responder, takes time and requires support. CDP offers this support, to cities and companies, on every step of the disclosing journey through guidance documentation, live webinars and workshops.
CDP’s guidance documents provide an overview of question pathways as well as details on what information to provide. Once you have registered and activated your questionnaire we can guide you on the format required and where to find tools or further information to construct your answers.
See the latest CDP guidance documentation and questionnaires
- Who is requesting my environmental data via CDP?
- What information am I being asked to disclose?
- Why should I disclose via CDP?
- How do I disclose using the Online Response System (ORS)?
- I have not been requested to respond. Can I disclose through CDP?
- What support is provided to help me disclose?
- 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?
- What is the timeline for responding?
- My parent organization already responds; should my subsidiary organization respond too?
- Will I be penalized for declining to answer all or part of the questionnaire?
- Will I receive a score for my questionnaire(s)?
- What happens to my response?
- How will my organization be listed on the CDP website?
- When will public responses be available to view?
- How do I view public responses?
- How do I change or update a submitted questionnaire?
- Is there a fee for responding?
- How do I provide feedback to CDP?
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Who is requesting my environmental data via CDP?
Companies
Investors and customers request environmental information from companies via CDP. Some companies receive requests to provide information to only investors, or only customers, and others may receive requests from both investors and customers.
In 2019:
- over 525 investors are requesting information from over 6,000 companies. The full list of companies
being requested to respond to investors is available
here.
- over 120 customers are requesting information from over 11,000 companies.
To read more about the stakeholders who request company disclosure, and for more information on how to become a requesting stakeholder, please view our CDP investor signatories and members and CDP supply chain member pages.
What information am I being asked to disclose?
Companies
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 found 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. CDP will notify you by email which stakeholders are requesting your response.
*If you respond to customers you will be presented with some additional questions in the supply chain module where you can report on information specific to the relationship with your customer.
Why should I disclose via CDP?
There are many benefits to disclosing. To discover more, please visit our page on the benefits of disclosing as a company, as a city, or as states and regions.
How do I disclose using the Online Response System (ORS)?
Companies
If your organization is being requested to respond by investors and/or customers, CDP will notify you by email and will send you relevant access links to our Online Response System (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 use the link to sign in using your existing password.
The link will take you to a dashboard containing information regarding which questionnaires your organization is being requested to respond to. You can activate the questionnaires in our Online Response System via this dashboard.
For more information on the disclosure timeline, please see our Disclosure in 2019 page.
For further information on activating, completing and submitting questionnaires in the ORS, please view our guide to Using the disclosure platform.
If you need help accessing your company’s questionnaire(s), please contact your local CDP office or email [email protected]
Cities, states and regions
If your organization is being requested to respond by CDP and its reporting partners, CDP will notify you by email and will send you relevant access links to our Online Response System (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 use the link to sign in using your existing password.
The link will take you to a dashboard containing information regarding which questionnaires your organization is being requested to respond to. You can activate the questionnaires in our Online Response System via this dashboard.
If you need help accessing your city’s questionnaire, please contact [email protected].
If you need help accessing your state/region’s questionnaire, please contact [email protected].
I have not been requested to respond. Can I disclose through CDP?
Companies
Yes, all companies are welcome to provide information via CDP’s climate change, forests and water security questionnaires. 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 access to questionnaire(s) and systems.
If you wish to disclose as a self-selected company you will be subject to the administrative fee for responding (see below). Your response(s) will be made available to all of CDP’s investor signatories and members. Self-selected companies will also receive a score, providing they respond to the full version of the questionnaire ahead of the deadline (July 31, 2019).
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.
Cities
If you are a city please contact [email protected] for assistance in disclosing to CDP.
States and Regions
If you are a state or region please contact [email protected] for assistance in disclosing to CDP.
What support is provided to help me disclose?
CDP provides a variety of support materials to help organizations disclosing to our questionnaires.
Questionnaires and core guidance documents can be found on our guidance pages under the guidance and information section of the website:
Before completing the corporate questionnaires, we strongly recommend you read the relevant Reporting Guidance, Scoring Introduction document (companies only) which contains CDP’s scoring eligibility information, and the relevant scoring methodology.
We also host live webinars and workshops designed to aid you with environmental reporting. See our events page.
To access the full suite of CDP's guidance documents, webinars and resources for responding 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.
How do I add another user to my account? What type of user permissions exist?
There is no limit to the number of users that can be added to your account.
There are different three types of user roles, and the different permissions for each user role are listed below. To add other users to your account, you will need to become the Main User.
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 using the Online Response System (ORS)?
| 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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Back to top ↑ | Cities FAQs | States & regions FAQs
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.
Companies
For companies requested to respond by Customers:
Subject to your consent, your contact details may be shared with your requesting 2019 Customer(s) to facilitate communication regarding your organization’s response(s). You will be asked to consent to this via the dashboard at the same time you are asked to consent to become the Main User. You can view which Customer(s) are requesting your organization’s response(s) via the dashboard. Please note that additional Customers may request your data in 2019, after the point at which you consent to become the Main User and activate your response(s), and by consenting to share your contact details with Customers, you agree to your contact details being shared with these additional Customers during the 2019 disclosure cycle. Any additional Customers will be made visible on your dashboard and CDP will notify you by email.
Benefits of consenting to share your contact details:
- Confirms to your Customers that you are the person responsible for your organization’s response(s)
- Enables direct conversations between you and your Customer(s) regarding your response, reporting expectations and opportunities for collaboration
Please note that you can still become the Main User, and submit a response to your Customers, even if you do not consent to CDP sharing your contact details with them.
If you do not consent to sharing your contact details with your requesting Customers(s), to discuss your response(s) they will only be able to contact colleagues at your organization that they already have contact details for. This is often contacts based in procurement teams.
If you wish to withdraw your consent to sharing your contact details, please contact [email protected]
For companies requested to respond to Investors:
CDP will not share your contact details with investors.
CDP will request additional consent in order to share your contact details with stakeholders for any other purpose.
Can I add a consultant as a user?
Yes. To give a consultant access to your current questionnaire(s), the Main User on behalf of its organization, can set them up as a Contributor, which will give them editing rights, but not submission rights. The Main User can add Contributors via their response dashboard. The Main User will need to make the actual submission themselves.
Please note that the Main User for a questionnaire must always be a representative of that organization, and should not be a consultant.
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].
What is the timeline for responding?
CDP works on an annual disclosure cycle, with the questionnaires for each year made available in advance via our guidance pages.
Companies can input information into the 2019 questionnaires via our Online Response System (ORS) from April 2019. We recommend organizations start preparing their responses in advance.
The deadline for submitting your response depends on the program(s) you are participating in:
- Companies submitting to investors and/or customers: July 31, 2019
(Limited extension opportunities may be available in accordance with CDP policy.)
- Cities, states and regions: July 10, 2019
For more information on the disclosure timeline, please see the Disclosure in 2019 page.
My parent organization already responds; should my subsidiary organization respond too?
This question and answer relates to disclosing companies only.
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 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.
Will I be penalized for declining to answer all or part of the questionnaire?
Organizations are encouraged to provide as much information as possible. 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.
Companies
CDP offers a minimum version of the questionnaires for smaller companies and those responding for the first time. If you are a company considering responding for the first time, please contact your local CDP office who will be able to support you further and explain all available options.
Please note that if you have been requested to participate and do not submit a response, you will be noted as “No Response” or “Declined to Participate” and receive an ‘F’ as your score. The stakeholders requesting your response will be informed. See How will my organization be listed on CDP’s website?
For more information on CDP scoring, please refer to the scoring introduction and scoring methodologies for your questionnaire(s) and Will I receive a score for my questionnaire(s)?
Will I receive a score for my questionnaire(s)?
Cities
Scoring is closely aligned with CDP’s mission and allows CDP to motivate cities to disclose their impacts on the environment and natural resources and take action to reduce negative impacts. For 2018, cities will receive private scores and feedback on their response. This feedback can only be viewed by the city and can be seen on the city dashboard and City Snapshot Report. Cities will receive a free score for their response if it is submitted by the official scoring and analysis deadline. Feedback calls will be available when scores are released at the end of 2018 to help cities understand their scores. For more information on scoring, please email [email protected].
Companies
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.
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, and the relevant scoring methodology.
Companies responding to the full version of the CDP questionnaires will receive a score if they respond by the deadline of July 31, 2019. Companies responding to the minimum version of the questionnaire will only receive a score if they are submitting a response to customers. For more details, please refer to the Scoring Introduction or contact your local CDP office.
If you submit your response after the deadline, and you wish to receive a score, please contact us to enquire about on-demand scoring.
Please note that if you have been requested to participate and do not submit a response, you will receive an ‘F’ as your score.
CDP provides score feedback charts following score release, and there are various feedback call options on offer. To find out more, please contact your local CDP office.
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 (see below for more information on scoring).
Companies:
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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| 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 |
Cities, states and regions
The Terms for our cities and states and regions questionnaires provide information on what may happen to your response after submission. The Terms are available through the ‘Submit your response’ page of the questionnaires in the Online Response System (ORS).
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 regardless of whether a response is submitted or not. 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 for more details.
- 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 receive an ‘F’ as your score.
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 website at different times depending on the program:
- Companies: TBC
- Cities: TBC
- States and Regions: TBC
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.
How do I change or update a submitted questionnaire?
After submission, your questionnaire is ‘view-only' via your response dashboard so any amendments can only be made by CDP staff. Amendment requests must be made by the official deadline (for that stakeholder) to be included in the annual CDP reports and scores. Please note that any changes that you make to your response after the Deadline may not be reflected in any score, report or analysis shared with investors or customers.
Please note that 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.
To request an amendment please see below:
Companies: 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, email your amendment form to [email protected]
Cities: Please contact [email protected]
States & Regions: Please contact [email protected].
Is there a fee for responding?
Cities, states and regions
There is no fee to respond if you are a city, state or region disclosing to our questionnaire.
Companies
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 administrative fee for companies responding to one or more of our investor requests on climate change, forests or water security.
Find out more about the fee.
The fee applies to companies listed, incorporated or headquartered in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, Cayman Islands, Channel Islands, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the UK or the USA.
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 listed above 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.
How do I provide feedback to CDP?
You can provide feedback to CDP on the content of our questionnaires and supporting documents through our online technical 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 email [email protected] or your local CDP contact.