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CDP scores explained: what A to D- means in 2026

CDP scores explained for 2026: what A to D- means, how disclosure works and what evidence companies should prepare.

Kieran Simpson 19 Jun 2026 Updated 13 Jul 2026

A CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project) score measures the maturity of an environmental disclosure response. It does not, by itself, show that a company has low emissions, a credible transition plan or strong environmental performance. In 2026, the practical task is to understand what the A to D- scale rewards and whether the evidence behind the response can withstand scrutiny elsewhere.

More than 22,100 companies disclosed environmental data through CDP in 2025, representing over half of global market capitalisation. CDP scored nearly 20,000 companies and placed 899, around 5%, on its 2025 Corporate A List. The 2026 response window is now open with updated questionnaires, scoring materials and essential criteria.

CDP sits in the space between voluntary disclosure, investor data, customer questionnaires and formal reporting. A company may disclose because investors ask. A supplier may disclose because a customer asks. A larger business may use CDP to compare emissions, forests, water, governance and transition-plan evidence across its value chain.

CDP therefore sits inside the wider environmental, social and governance (ESG) information market, but it is not a general ESG rating. It scores a response against a published methodology for climate change, forests and water security. The score reflects disclosure quality and management maturity within that process, not an all-purpose verdict on the company.

That distinction changes how the score should be used. If the emissions boundary is weak, targets are vague, assumptions are undocumented or supplier data is thin, a letter grade cannot make the underlying environmental story more credible. The disclosure has to remain consistent with annual reporting, customer answers, transition plans and public claims.

Core test

CDP is most useful when it turns environmental disclosure into decision-useful evidence. It is much less useful when companies chase a score without fixing the data, governance and implementation gaps underneath it.

What a CDP score means

Question	Short answer
What is CDP?	A not-for-profit environmental disclosure platform that collects company, city, state and regional data on climate, forests, water and nature-related issues.
Is CDP mandatory?	CDP itself is not a regulator. Disclosure can still become commercially important when investors, lenders, customers or supply-chain partners request it.
What does CDP score?	CDP scores disclosure quality and environmental management maturity. A higher score is not the same as a full sustainability verdict or proof that a company is low impact.
What changed for 2026?	The response window is open with updated questionnaires, scoring materials and essential criteria. Small and medium-sized enterprises can now earn an SME A for climate change, although CDP says it is not equivalent to a full-corporate A.
What should companies focus on first?	Boundary, ownership, evidence, emissions data quality, risk governance, target credibility and whether public claims match the disclosed information.

Why companies receive CDP requests

CDP has influence because it concentrates environmental questions that many organisations were already asking separately. Investors want climate-risk information. Buyers want supplier emissions data. Banks want evidence for transition finance. Companies want a way to compare environmental performance across large supplier bases. CDP gives those requests a common channel.

A questionnaire is still only as good as the data, assumptions and governance behind it. CDP can nevertheless change what companies are expected to provide. A business that once published a broad sustainability narrative may now be asked for structured answers on emissions, governance, targets, risks, opportunities, water, forests and value-chain engagement.

In practice, the common channel makes inconsistencies easier to find. An emissions total that changes between a CDP response, annual report and customer questionnaire now needs an explanation, not another polished narrative.

How CDP disclosure works

CDP runs an annual disclosure cycle. Organisations are asked to respond through CDP's platform, using questionnaire material that reflects the environmental topics relevant to the request. Companies can disclose on climate change, forests, water security and biodiversity-related information, with sector and activity detail where relevant.

For many businesses, the important distinction is between a public sustainability report and a disclosure workflow. A report is what readers see. A CDP response is also a data process: who owns the answers, where the figures came from, what boundary was used, who checked the response and whether the same answer matches other filings, reports and customer submissions.

Part of the process	What it tests	Why it matters
Questionnaire scope	Which environmental topics and sector details apply.	A company can face different questions depending on its activities, impacts and request route.
Evidence ownership	Who can support the answer internally.	Answers become fragile when sustainability teams rely on unsupported spreadsheets or informal estimates.
Emissions boundary	Which operations, subsidiaries, energy use and value-chain categories are included.	Boundary choices can change reported emissions and make year-on-year comparison misleading.
Governance and targets	Whether climate issues are managed, monitored and linked to plans.	Disclosure quality depends on controls, not only narrative ambition.
External consistency	Whether answers match reports, claims, customer questionnaires and regulatory filings.	Inconsistency creates trust risk, even when individual answers look polished.

How the A to D- scoring scale works

CDP scores organisations across four consecutive levels: Disclosure, Awareness, Management and Leadership. A response has to meet the scoring threshold and the essential criteria for a level before it can move higher. Strong answers in one category cannot always compensate for a missing requirement elsewhere.

The resulting letters run from D- to A. Disclosure scores reward completeness. Awareness scores examine whether the organisation understands how environmental issues intersect with the business. Management scores look for evidence that those issues are being managed. Leadership scores apply CDP's most demanding criteria.

Scoring level	What it examines	What it cannot establish alone
Disclosure, D- or D	Completeness of the environmental information supplied.	That the company has materially reduced its environmental impact.
Awareness, C- or C	How fully the company has evaluated the connection between environmental issues and its business.	That risks are being managed effectively or environmental outcomes are improving.
Management, B- or B	Evidence that environmental risks, impacts, targets and processes are being managed.	That its strategy is complete or that delivery is guaranteed.
Leadership, A- or A	Performance against CDP's most advanced scoring criteria and essential requirements.	That all climate, nature, water or supply-chain risks are solved.

A high-scoring company may still have large emissions. A lower-scoring company may operate in a difficult sector, have less mature reporting systems or disclose weaknesses more openly. The score becomes more informative when the reader checks what changed underneath it: the Scope 3 method, transition-plan assumptions, board oversight, data verification and precision of public claims.

CDP has also introduced an SME A score for climate change in 2026. It gives smaller companies using the streamlined questionnaire a leadership route, but CDP explicitly states that an SME A is not equivalent to an A earned through the full corporate questionnaire.

CDP vs CSRD, ISSB, TCFD and VSME

CDP overlaps with other sustainability frameworks, but it does not replace them. This is where many readers get lost. The same emissions number can appear in a CDP response, a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) report, an International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) style climate disclosure, a customer questionnaire and a lender data room. The job of each channel is different.

As ISSB adoption progresses across jurisdictions, CDP answers are increasingly likely to be compared with investor-focused reporting rather than read as a standalone questionnaire.

Framework or channel	Main job	How it connects to CDP
CDP	Collects and scores environmental disclosure requested by investors, customers and other market actors.	Can act as a common questionnaire and data channel across climate, water, forests and nature topics.
CSRD	European Union corporate sustainability reporting law using European Sustainability Reporting Standards.	Companies in scope need formal reporting controls. CDP answers should not contradict CSRD evidence, especially climate evidence covered by ESRS E1.
ISSB	Investor-focused sustainability disclosure baseline from the IFRS Foundation.	CDP has mapped questionnaire material against major frameworks, including ISSB-related climate disclosure architecture.
TCFD	Climate-risk disclosure structure built around governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets.	TCFD shaped much of modern climate disclosure, and CDP material has long reflected that structure.
VSME	Voluntary reporting standard for smaller non-listed companies facing customer, bank or investor requests.	A smaller supplier may use a proportionate evidence file to answer customer requests before it is ready for a full CDP response.

The operational lesson is to build one evidence base, then map it into different channels. If each team answers separately, the company creates avoidable inconsistency. If finance, sustainability, procurement, legal and operations work from a controlled ESG data room, CDP becomes one output from a stronger system.

Who uses CDP data?

CDP data is useful because it travels. The same disclosure can influence investor research, supplier engagement, lending conversations, customer due diligence, procurement risk reviews, public sustainability claims and internal target management. If the question is how carbon data feeds business decisions, the internal carbon pricing guide explains the shadow-price and internal-fee route.

User	What they usually want	Risk if the answer is weak
Investors	Comparable climate-risk, emissions and governance data.	The company looks harder to value or compare.
Customers	Supplier emissions, targets and evidence for their own Scope 3 work.	The supplier may slow tenders, renewals or onboarding.
Banks and lenders	Transition-risk evidence and data quality for finance decisions.	Weak evidence can make sustainability-linked discussions less credible.
Companies themselves	A structured way to identify gaps, track progress and organise ownership.	The disclosure exercise becomes a once-a-year scramble.
Readers and analysts	A way to compare disclosure maturity against public claims.	A score is mistaken for a full environmental verdict.

What companies should check first

A company preparing a CDP response should start with controls, not wording. The strongest answer is not the most polished paragraph. It is the answer that can be traced back to a reliable source, a clear owner and a documented method.

Boundary: which entities, sites, activities and value-chain categories are included?
Ownership: who signs off emissions, risk, target, water, forest and supplier answers?
Method: which factors, assumptions, baselines and calculation methods are used?
Evidence: where are invoices, activity data, supplier responses, policies and assurance records stored?
Consistency: do CDP answers match annual reports, CSRD work, ISSB aligned disclosure, customer responses and website claims?
Change log: can the company explain why a figure, boundary or score changed from the previous year?
Claims: are public statements about net zero, renewable energy, offsets or climate leadership supported by the disclosed data?

That last point is the reputational risk. A company can damage trust by publishing confident climate language while its disclosure response reveals weak data, missing governance or limited implementation.

Common mistakes

Mistake	Why it causes trouble	Better approach
Chasing a letter grade	The team optimises wording while the evidence base remains weak.	Use the score as feedback on the disclosure system.
Answering CDP separately from reporting work	Figures and assumptions drift across annual reports, customer questionnaires and regulatory disclosures.	Build a single evidence file and map it to each disclosure channel.
Ignoring Scope 3 uncertainty	Value-chain figures can look precise while relying on broad estimates.	Explain data quality, exclusions, methods and planned improvements.
Treating supplier requests as admin	Procurement teams may use the response to assess risk, resilience and future readiness.	Connect supplier answers to emissions, targets, risk and improvement plans.
Publishing broad claims first	Marketing language can outrun the data and create greenwashing risk.	Let the disclosure evidence set the boundaries for public claims.

What the score can carry

CDP is not a government reporting law, yet it can still affect companies because investors, banks and customers use the platform to request comparable information. It has become part of the climate-data infrastructure around corporate sustainability.

The score may be what appears in headlines, dashboards or supplier portals. Its credibility still depends on whether the company can explain the data behind it and reproduce the same evidence when an investor, customer, auditor or regulator asks a different question.

Common CDP questions

What does CDP stand for?

CDP originally stood for Carbon Disclosure Project. The organisation now uses CDP as its name because its disclosure work covers wider environmental issues, including climate, forests, water security and biodiversity-related information.

Is a CDP score the same as an ESG rating?

No. An environmental, social and governance (ESG) rating is usually a provider judgement about a company or issuer. A CDP score is based on a CDP disclosure response and methodology. Both can influence markets, but they are not the same thing.

Does CDP replace CSRD or ISSB reporting?

No. CDP is a disclosure platform and scoring system. CSRD is a European Union reporting law. ISSB standards provide an investor-focused sustainability disclosure baseline. Companies should align evidence where possible, but the channels have different roles.

Useful source links

Data checked

This article was checked on 12 July 2026 against CDP's live 2026 disclosure materials, scoring guidance, essential-criteria information, 2025 score release and official company guidance. CDP questionnaires, scoring methods, access rules and framework alignment can change.

Information only

This guide is for general information only. It is not legal, accounting, regulatory, procurement, investment or financial advice. Sustainability reporting rules, lender expectations, customer requests and disclosure methodologies can change. Check current official sources and professional advice before relying on this for compliance, reporting, finance or procurement decisions.