As many of us and you are elbows deep in CDP submissions currently, it is now abundantly clear that CDP has revamped its disclosure platform and reporting process for corporations and organizations. While CDP’s efforts are well-intentioned, the new platform and format present some challenges that require different strategies in order to maximize your scores.
Most prominently, the new platform features an integrated questionnaire that merges all environmental topics into one comprehensive format even though organizations will continue to receive separate scores for their Climate Change, Water Security, and Forests responses.
To help companies provide the most complete and accurate responses possible, CDP has released a number of guidance and scoring methodology documents for the 2024 reporting cycle. These resources not only offer direction on how to respond effectively, but also aim to help organizations understand CDP’s updated criteria for demonstrating progress across various levels of environmental stewardship.
Understand CDP’s new scoring methodologies and essential criteria
CDP continues to raise the bar each year to align with the latest best practices and continues to evolve its interpretation of what it means to be a leader in environmental stewardship.
In 2024, CDP added new “checks” for each environmental issue, identifying requirements that must be met to achieve scores in Climate Change, Water Security, and Forests for the full corporate questionnaire.
- CDP has introduced an additional layer of essential criteria for Climate Change that applies across all scoring levels. Organizations responding to the full corporate questionnaire for Climate Change must meet these criteria to progress their scores to the next level (D to C, C to B, B to A etc.). These criteria showcase CDP’s high expectations of those wishing to score amongst the leaders, including (but not limited to) comprehensive disclosure on relevant climate-related risks and opportunities, board competency on climate change, aligning transition plans and targets to a 1.5°C scenario, and comprehensive emissions disclosures, including getting defined proportions of those emissions verified.
- For Water Security, the 2024 questionnaire introduces essential criteria at the Leadership and A-List levels. Companies completing the full corporate questionnaire must now meet these criteria to attain high scores. Similar to the Climate Change guidance, these criteria outline CDP’s A-list expectations, including (but not limited to) comprehensive disclosure on relevant water-related risks and opportunities, board competency on water-related issues, no major exclusions (with some caveats), and evolved expectations for water-related target disclosure.
- Similarly for Forests, CDP has introduced essential criteria at the Leadership and A- List levels. These additions highlight the critical role of responsible forest management in combating climate change, with expectations including (but not limited to) comprehensive disclosure on commodities produced and/or sourced, board competency on forest-related issues, and forest-related policy.
Reviewing and understanding these new essential criteria is crucial for companies aiming to improve their environmental performance scores. By doing so, organizations can ensure they meet CDP’s evolving standards and demonstrate genuine leadership in environmental stewardship.
Don’t leave questions unanswered
Nearly every question in the questionnaire is scored for Disclosure points, which means that unanswered questions will receive a score of zero out of the maximum number of points available for that question or set of questions. So even if the data isn’t readily obtainable or the question isn’t even applicable, we recommend that responders fill in all required fields to the best of their ability.
Focus on the highly weighted sections of the questionnaire
The highly weighted sections of the questionnaire present the greatest opportunity to improve the quality of your disclosure and your CDP score. CDP has released documents that outline the weightings that will be applied to the scoring categories across environmental issues.
- In Climate Change, some of the highest weighted categories are Targets, Governance, Dependencies, Impacts, Risks and Opportunities, Business Strategy, and Verification. Providing comprehensive answers to these sections is a critical step to demonstrate robust strategies to mitigate climate change, while maximizing your score. Notably, verification is weighted highly in 2024, recognizing the increased importance of disclosing quality data and setting realistic targets.
- For Water Security, the highest weighted categories are Targets, Water Accounting, Risk Disclosure, and Dependencies, Impacts, Risks & Opportunities Process, and Value Chain Engagement. These highly weighted categories reinforce the importance of demonstrating that you are actively monitoring and tracking progress in all aspects of water security. Notably, Pricing Environmental Externalities and Public Policy Engagement and Industry Collaboration are both new categories within the Water Security questionnaire.
- For Forests, Commodity Visibility and Reporting, Deforestation-and Conversion-Free Status, Targets, and Value Chain engagement are key priorities, underscoring the critical need to eliminate deforestation and the conversion of other ecosystems linked to the production and sourcing of forest-risks commodities to meet near-term targets.
It takes a village!
To succeed in advancing environmental stewardship across any organization, teamwork is essential. The new integrated CDP questionnaire format, now spanning multiple environmental areas, promotes more collaboration across subject matter experts (SMEs) by encouraging cross-departmental involvement. Therefore, it is in your best interest to gain support from colleagues across departments – such as EHS, finance, HR, procurement – to ensure comprehensive and high-quality responses to the CDP questionnaire. This approach not only enhances the quality of your submission but also fosters increased internal SME discourse and knowledge sharing.
In addition to enhanced SME collaboration facilitated by CDP, the option to download the questionnaires as Word documents has created additional opportunities for companies to collaborate offline. Despite the unwieldy length of the MS Word-formatted CDP download, this remains a useful function for offline editing among collaborators who may not have direct access to the CDP platform. Any edits made online within the CDP platform are automatically recorded each time a team member downloads these questionnaire documents. Moreover, the ability to download sections of the questionnaire separately contributes to efficiency in completing the questionnaire.
Finally, we recommend to not go it alone! Just as improving environmental stewardship across your organization requires buy-in from many departments, including IT, HR, supply chain/procurement, operations, and finance, it is imperative that these same stakeholders help fill out the updated CDP questionnaire. By embracing this collaborative approach, organizations will not only improve their CDP submissions, but also strengthen their overall environmental strategies through shared knowledge and collective effort.
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