The Ultimate Guide to CDP Reporting (Carbon Disclosure Project) in 2026

CDP reporting involves disclosing your company's environmental impact through the Carbon Disclosure Project, the global non-profit that runs the world's most widely used environmental disclosure system.

Companies complete a standardised questionnaire covering climate change and, where relevant, water security, forests and other environmental themes. CDP disclosure is voluntary and not required by law, but it is increasingly expected by investors, customers and supply chain partners.

This guide explains what CDP is, how the reporting process works in the 2026 cycle, who needs to do it, and what a business needs to prepare. By the end it should be clear whether CDP is relevant to a given company, and what a first submission involves in practice.

What Is CDP Reporting?

CDP reporting is the disclosure of a company's environmental performance through the Carbon Disclosure Project's questionnaire system. CDP is a global non-profit that runs the most widely used environmental disclosure platform in the world, collecting data from companies, cities, states and regions.

Founded in 2000, the organisation rebranded from "Carbon Disclosure Project" to "CDP" to reflect a scope that now reaches well beyond carbon, into water security, forests, biodiversity, plastics and, newly for 2026, ocean. In the 2025 cycle, more than 23,100 organisations disclosed through CDP.

The mechanics are straightforward. A company completes the questionnaire relevant to its size and activities, submits it through CDP's online portal, and receives a score. That score is then shared with the investors and customers who requested the disclosure.

How Does the CDP Scoring System Work?

CDP scores companies on a scale from D to A, based on the quality and completeness of their disclosure.

The scoring bands reflect progressively deeper levels of environmental management:

• D / D-: Disclosure only. The company has submitted data but shows limited awareness of environmental risks.
• C: Awareness. The company demonstrates some understanding of its environmental impacts.
• B: Management. The company is taking active steps to manage environmental issues.
• A- / A: Leadership. The company demonstrates best-practice environmental management and transparency.

Scoring is based on both the completeness of answers and the quality of the underlying data. A company that discloses a full GHG inventory with verified data will score higher than one relying on estimates alone. This is why having an accurate carbon footprint measurement process in place before you submit makes a material difference to your score.

What Does the CDP Questionnaire Cover?

Until 2023, CDP ran three separate questionnaires for climate change, water security and forests. Since 2024 these have been combined into a single integrated corporate questionnaire, so a company discloses across multiple environmental themes in one place rather than completing separate submissions. 

The full corporate questionnaire is built from 13 modules. Modules 1 to 6 and 13 are integrated, covering governance, strategy, risks and targets across every theme. Modules 7 to 11 each cover environmental performance for a single theme, and module 12 is a sector-specific module for financial services.

The themes the questionnaire can cover are:

• Climate change: greenhouse gas emissions across Scopes 1, 2 and 3, transition planning and energy use. Scored.
• Forests: the production and sourcing of high-impact commodities, now covering seven (cattle, palm oil, soy, timber, cocoa, coffee and rubber). Scored.
• Water security: water withdrawal, consumption, discharge and pollution management. Scored.
• Biodiversity: dependencies on, and impacts to, ecosystems. Unscored.
• Plastics: production, use and management of plastics. Unscored.
• Ocean: marine-related risks and dependencies, new for 2026. Unscored, and unlike the others it has no module of its own, with its questions built into the integrated modules and answered only if you opt in.

Companies do not answer every theme. All disclosers respond to the climate change questions, which form the baseline of the assessment. Water security and forests questions are presented only where they are relevant, which CDP determines through its Activity Classification System (CDP-ACS), a direct request from a customer or investor, or a company's own decision to opt in. The questionnaire generates based on a short setup process covering size, sector and chosen themes, so two companies can receive quite different versions of it.

The climate change questions cover:

• Governance: who is responsible for climate-related risks and opportunities.
• Risks and opportunities: the climate-related risks the business faces and their financial impact.
• Business strategy: how climate change is built into the company's strategy and planning.
• Targets and performance: the emissions reduction targets set, and progress against them.
• Emissions data: Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions, measured in tonnes of CO₂e.
• Verification: whether the emissions data has been independently verified.

For most businesses, having a full-scope GHG inventory covering Scopes 1, 2 and 3 is the single most important piece of preparation.

What Is the CDP SME Questionnaire? 

Not every business completes the full corporate questionnaire. CDP runs a separate, streamlined SME questionnaire for smaller organisations.

A company is eligible for the SME questionnaire if it has 1,000 or fewer employees and annual revenue of US$250 million or less. Above either threshold, only the full corporate questionnaire is available. Eligible companies can still choose to complete the full questionnaire voluntarily, and members of the RE100 initiative are not eligible for the SME version.

The SME questionnaire is shorter and climate-focused. It asks for fewer and simpler datapoints, skips sector-specific and biodiversity questions, and in 2026 runs to ten modules. Only climate change is scored; the newly added forests and water modules are presented but not scored. For the first time in 2026, an SME can earn an A score for climate, though an SME A is not equivalent to a full corporate A, and CDP recommends the full questionnaire for companies engaging with capital markets or responding to large customers.

Fees are often misunderstood. CDP's administration fee is the same whether a company submits the SME or the full questionnaire. A reduced-fee tier exists for smaller and limited-budget organisations, but it is only available to companies headquartered outside the major developed economies, so most UK, EU and US businesses pay the standard fee regardless of which questionnaire they complete. Fee amounts change each year, so the CDP fees page is the place to check current figures.

For a fuller breakdown of the SME route, including what verification SMEs actually need, see our primer on CDP submission and verification for SMEs.

Is CDP Reporting Mandatory?

CDP disclosure is voluntary in every jurisdiction. No law requires a company to disclose through CDP itself, and a company that receives a request can decline it.

What is changing is the regulatory backdrop around it. Mandatory climate and sustainability disclosure is arriving in a growing number of jurisdictions, including the EU's CSRD, California's SB 253 and SB 261, and national adoption of the ISSB's IFRS standards. By one estimate, some form of the emissions disclosure CDP pioneered is, or soon will be, mandatory in more than 40 jurisdictions. CDP is aligned with these regimes, so a CDP submission can help a company prepare for them, but CDP is not itself a legal requirement anywhere.

However, in practice, two groups make disclosure difficult to avoid:

• Investors. CDP's Capital Markets Signatories, more than 540 financial institutions holding over US$110 trillion in assets, requested disclosures from over 43,000 organisations. Not all respond, but for a company seeking investment or with institutional shareholders, a CDP disclosure, or its absence, increasingly features in due diligence.
• Supply chain customers. CDP's Supply Chain programme has more than 270 member organisations, including Walmart, Microsoft and Nike, which send questionnaire requests directly to suppliers. Declining a request can affect the commercial relationship.

What Is the CDP Reporting Timeline?

CDP disclosure runs on an annual cycle. For the 2026 cycle, the key dates are:

• Spring: CDP publishes the questionnaire, guidance and scoring methodology, and the portal opens for requesters.
• Week of 15 June: the response window opens for companies.
• 16 September: the scoring deadline. Responses submitted by this date are eligible for a score.
• Week of 26 October: the final deadline, after which the questionnaire closes and no further edits are possible. Responses added between the scoring deadline and this date are accepted but not scored.
• Late in the year and into the next: scores are released to the company and to the investors and customers who requested the data.

A first-time discloser benefits from starting data collection early in the year, well before the June window opens, particularly where Scope 3 data needs gathering from suppliers or third-party verification is planned.

What Data Do You Need to Complete a CDP Submission?

The volume of data depends on which themes apply and how thoroughly each section is answered. For a first climate change submission, the core requirements are:

Emissions data

• Scope 1 (direct emissions from owned or controlled sources)
• Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased energy)
• Scope 3 (value chain emissions; CDP asks you to report against all 15 categories, with data for the relevant ones and a stated reason for any excluded) 

Supporting information

• The methodology and emissions factors used
• The boundary of the GHG inventory (which entities and activities are included)
• Any third-party verification of the emissions data

Governance and strategy

• The named individual with board-level responsibility for climate
• How climate risks and opportunities are assessed
• Any emissions reduction targets that have been set

For companies that have already completed a GHG inventory aligned with the GHG Protocol, much of this data already exists, and the questionnaire becomes a matter of formatting and contextualising what is in hand. For companies that have not yet measured their footprint, that is the right starting point. Seedling's platform produces GHG Protocol-aligned outputs that map directly to these requirements.

How Does CDP Relate to Other Reporting Frameworks?

CDP is designed to work alongside other frameworks, and it has steadily aligned with them to reduce duplicated effort.

• GHG Protocol: the methodology standard most companies use to measure emissions. CDP requires emissions data measured in line with the GHG Protocol, so a compliant inventory is a prerequisite for a credible submission.
• ISSB / IFRS S2: since 2024, CDP's climate questions have been aligned with IFRS S2, the ISSB's climate disclosure standard. Disclosing through CDP helps a company prepare for IFRS-based regimes as countries adopt them.
• ESRS (CSRD): CDP is interoperable with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards, so data prepared for one can support the other.
• TNFD: CDP's nature-related questions on forests and water are mapped to the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures recommendations.
• GRI: CDP aligns with several GRI standards, so companies already reporting under GRI can reuse data.
• SBTi: companies with validated science-based targets score more highly on CDP's targets and performance questions.

A note on TCFD: CDP's questionnaire was historically built around the TCFD's four pillars of governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. The TCFD has since disbanded and its monitoring role moved to the IFRS Foundation, with IFRS S2 carrying that structure forward. The four-pillar logic still underpins the questionnaire.

The practical takeaway is that solid foundations (a full-scope GHG inventory, a credible reduction plan and verified data) turn CDP into a disclosure exercise rather than a data-gathering scramble.

What Does a Good CDP Score Require?

Reaching the Leadership band takes more than accurate data. CDP's methodology rewards companies that can demonstrate:

• Verified emissions data. Under the 2026 essential criteria for the full corporate questionnaire, Leadership requires third-party verification of Scope 1 and 2 covering at least 95% of reported emissions, and the A List requires 100% coverage of Scopes 1 and 2 plus verification of at least one Scope 3 category. These thresholds apply to the full questionnaire, not the SME version.
• Ambitious, science-based targets. Targets aligned with a 1.5°C pathway score more favourably than high-level pledges.
• Full Scope 3 coverage. Companies that measure and report all material Scope 3 categories score higher than those reporting Scopes 1 and 2 only.
• Board-level accountability. CDP expects to see named individuals at board level with responsibility for climate.
• Documented reduction initiatives. Specific, quantified actions with timescales and projected savings carry more weight than general commitments.

For most companies submitting for the first time, the realistic aim is the Management band. Reaching Leadership typically takes two to three cycles as data quality improves and reduction initiatives are implemented and evidenced.

How Do You Actually Submit to CDP?

The process runs through CDP's online portal. The practical sequence is:

1. Register on the CDP portal. Create an account at cdp.net and complete the setup questions on size, sector and themes. The questionnaire then generates to match the company's profile.
2. Review the guidance. CDP publishes detailed guidance and scoring methodology for each theme. Reading it first prevents avoidable gaps.
3. Gather the data. Collect the GHG inventory, governance documentation, targets and reduction initiatives.
4. Complete the questionnaire. Work through each module. Progress can be saved and returned to, and for repeat disclosers some answers carry forward from the previous cycle, though CDP does not review or update those.
5. Submit by the 16 September scoring deadline. Later edits are accepted up to the late-October close but are not scored.
6. Review the score. Once released, use the feedback to target the sections where improvement would most raise next year's score.

Do Smaller Businesses Need to Report to CDP?

CDP was originally built for large, listed companies. The SME questionnaire has made it far more accessible, but disclosure still takes time and resource. The honest answer is that a business needs to report to CDP if someone is asking it to. In practice that means:

• A large customer or supply chain partner has sent a CDP Supply Chain request
• An investor or lender has asked for a CDP score as part of due diligence
• A procurement process the business wants to win requires a CDP disclosure

If none of those apply, CDP is not necessarily the right first move. For many smaller businesses, the more immediate priority is building an accurate, GHG Protocol-aligned carbon footprint that can support several reporting needs at once, whether that is CDP, B Corp, EcoVadis, SECR or a client questionnaire.

How Can Seedling Help With CDP Reporting?

Seedling's carbon management platform produces the GHG Protocol-aligned emissions data that sits underneath a credible CDP submission. The platform covers Scopes 1, 2 and 3, with built-in data capture, accounting integrations (Xero, Sage, QuickBooks) and employee and supplier surveys that make the harder-to-measure categories manageable.

A dedicated Seedling carbon expert builds a quantified decarbonisation plan and can help set SBTi-aligned targets, both of which feed directly into a stronger CDP score. Seedling's outputs are assured to align with the GHG Protocol, and third-party verification is available through our ISO 14064 verification service.

We give you the footprint, the plan and the verification that a CDP response is built on. If you are preparing for a submission, book a demo to see how the platform maps to the data CDP asks for.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is CDP reporting?

A: CDP reporting is the process of disclosing a company's environmental performance through the Carbon Disclosure Project, a global non-profit that runs the world's most widely used environmental disclosure system. Companies complete a single integrated questionnaire covering climate change and, where relevant, water security and forests, receive a score from A down to D-, and share that score with the investors and customers who requested it. 

‍Q: Is CDP reporting mandatory?

A: No. CDP is voluntary and is not required by law in any jurisdiction. In practice it can be hard to avoid, because CDP Supply Chain members (more than 270 organisations including Walmart, Microsoft and Nike) and Capital Markets Signatories (over 540 financial institutions) send disclosure requests directly to companies. Declining a request can affect commercial and investment relationships. 

Q: Is there a smaller version of the CDP questionnaire? 

A: Yes. Companies with 1,000 or fewer employees and revenue of US$250 million or less can complete the SME questionnaire, which is shorter and focused on climate. The admin fee is the same as the full questionnaire, but the reporting burden is lighter. 

Q: What data do you need for a CDP submission?

A: For a climate change submission: Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions measured in tCO₂e and aligned with the GHG Protocol; the methodology and emissions factors used; the inventory boundary; any third-party verification; board-level governance details; climate-related risks and opportunities; and any reduction targets with progress data.

Q: How long does it take to complete a CDP submission?

A: For a first-time submission, the data gathering and questionnaire completion typically take several weeks of focused work, with the timeline driven mostly by whether a GHG inventory already exists. Companies with a current, full-scope footprint move significantly faster. Most benefit from starting data collection several months before the September scoring deadline. 

About Seedling

Seedling is carbon management software trusted by 500+ businesses. The platform gives teams the technology and expert guidance they need to measure an accurate, full-scope carbon footprint, build a quantified decarbonisation plan, and produce compliance-ready outputs for frameworks including CDP, B Corp, SECR, EcoVadis, and ISO 14064. Setup typically takes two to four weeks, with less than one day of your time. Learn more about Seedling or book a demo.

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