Carbon Disclosure Project Examples: What Real CDP Disclosures Look Like

Key Takeaways:

• CDP stopped calling itself the Carbon Disclosure Project in 2013, and since 2024 it has run one corporate questionnaire covering climate change, forests, water security, plastics and biodiversity, with ocean questions added in 2026.
• 877 companies reached the 2025 Corporate A List, roughly 4% of those scored, and 23 of them held an A across climate change, forests and water security at the same time.
• The 2026 scoring deadline is 16 September 2026 at 11:59pm International Dateline West. Responses filed after it are published but not scored, and results reach companies in the week of 30 November 2026.
• A UK-headquartered company pays £2,450 for CDP's Foundation admin fee or £5,985 for Enhanced, both excluding local taxes, and cannot submit until the fee is paid or an exemption applied.
• The most instructive published examples are company score reports, which put the letter grade next to the sector and regional averages, rather than the announcements that follow in January.
• Verification decides A List eligibility. CDP's 2026 essential criteria require 100% of reported Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and at least 70% of reported Scope 3 emissions to be verified by a third party.

Search for carbon disclosure project examples and most of what comes back explains what CDP is instead of showing you one.

Here we go the other way. This article works through material companies have already published: a score report sitting on a corporate website, the announcements firms issue when results land, and the questions inside CDP's questionnaire those answers come from.

It also covers the 2026 dates, the UK admin fee, the scoring gates that decide whether a response finishes at C or A, and where the figures overlap with what a UK business already files under SECR.

CDP disclosure is voluntary. No British company is legally obliged to answer it, which is precisely why seeing what a strong response looks like counts for more here than it would in a statutory regime.

What is CDP?

CDP was founded in London in 2000 by Paul Dickinson and Tessa Tennant, who wanted investors to be able to ask companies directly about their emissions.

The name was shortened in 2013 to reflect a remit that had grown well past carbon. The original wording survives in search behaviour, in job adverts and in about half the questions finance teams ask, so any article about examples has to begin by confirming that CDP and the Carbon Disclosure Project are the same organisation.

It is a registered charity in England and Wales, number 1122330, and a company limited by guarantee registered in England under number 05013650. Sherry Madera is chief executive.

CDP's scale is what gives a voluntary questionnaire its pull, so it is worth establishing first.

More than 23,100 organisations disclosed through CDP in 2025. Over 22,100 of those were companies, and nearly 20,000 received a score. In the same year 640 investors holding US$127 trillion in assets asked companies to disclose, while more than 270 buyers requested data from around 45,000 suppliers through CDP's supply chain programme. For the 2026 cycle, CDP's capital markets signatories, over 540 financial institutions with more than US$110 trillion in assets, are asking over 43,000 organisations to respond.

Published Examples

CDP’s own score database

CDP publishes public, parent-level theme scores on its scores and A Lists page. Companies in the middle of an appeal are excluded, and a company that missed the scoring deadline has no score to show at all. Two things tend to surprise people looking there for the first time. The first is that scores are given per theme, so a firm can hold an A for water security and a B for climate change in the same cycle. The second is contractual: CDP's terms of website use restrict its scores to internal, non-commercial use unless you request a licence, so lifting a competitor's grade into a pitch deck is not automatically permitted.

Access to full responses through the website has also shifted. Until the end of 2024, anyone with a CDP login could view a limited number of individual public corporate responses, usually 20, and CDP has since said it is changing that arrangement to understand how the data is being used.

Score reports companies publish themselves

The richer examples come from companies that publish the score report CDP sends them after the cycle closes. That document is not the questionnaire response. It is CDP's feedback on the response: the grade, the peer benchmark, and the categories that held the score down. CDP confirms in its guidance on understanding your score that scored disclosers receive a category breakdown and, where available, sector and regional averages.

Reading a Score Report: London Stock Exchange Group

London Stock Exchange Group has published its CDP climate change score report for the 2023 cycle, and it repays reading in full because it shows what a company sees after submission rather than what it says beforehand.

LSEG scored A-, inside the Leadership band. The report sets that against a Europe regional average of B, a global average of C, and a sector average of C for specialised professional services, and records that 17% of companies in its activity group reached Leadership. CDP also notes that peer averages are compiled only from investor-requested company scores, which matters if you intend to benchmark against them.

So the report answers a question a bare letter grade cannot: how hard was that grade to reach, in this sector, in this region.

Category scores sit underneath, and they mark the areas that need attention to move up a band. The report also lists a sample of A List companies from the same activity group, which in LSEG's case included Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group and Capita plc. That structure is the reason a score report beats a press release as an example to work from. A press release gives you the outcome. A score report gives you the mechanism.

What Companies Publish When the Scores Land

Results reach companies in late November, and the announcements run through December and January. Four from the 2025 cycle:

• Best Buy recorded a ninth consecutive year on the Climate A List, out of nearly 20,000 companies scored, and set the grade alongside its own figure of a 74% cut in carbon emissions in FY25 against a 2009 baseline.
• ROCKWOOL Group moved to A- in both climate change and water security, up from B in 2024.
• TITAN reported an A in water security and an A- in climate change, a fifth consecutive year at Leadership.
• NTT announced a third consecutive year on the climate A List, and its fourth appearance on it.

Twenty-three companies held Triple A status in 2025, across climate change, forests and water security at once. Since 2023 the number of climate A scores has climbed from 346 to 751, water security from 101 to 263, and forests from 30 to 55.

The pattern worth copying is the pairing. Each of those announcements puts the CDP grade next to a physical performance number the company can stand behind. A grade on its own reads as a rating. A grade next to a verified reduction reads as evidence.

The Scoring Ladder

Four bands, each split into a plus and a minus grade, give eight rungs from D- up to A:

• Disclosure (D- or D) measures how completely you answered.
• Awareness (C- or C) measures how well you have assessed where environmental issues intersect with the business.
• Management (B- or B) rewards evidence of action taken.
• Leadership (A- or A) is reserved for practice CDP defines as leading, which in its own description includes tracking progress against a public 1.5°C-aligned transition plan, engaging suppliers, and holding a Scope 1 and 2 reduction target validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.

A company requested by capital markets that does not respond is marked "Did not disclose" rather than scored.

Then come the gates.

CDP calls them essential criteria, and they behave differently from points. Clearing the points threshold for a band is not sufficient. Miss an essential criterion attached to that band and the score is capped below it: fail one at Awareness and the response is limited to a D, meet Awareness but fail Management and it is capped at a C. Climate change criteria apply from Awareness upwards on the full corporate questionnaire. For forests and water security in 2026, essential criteria apply only at Leadership and A List level.

Verification is the gate that catches most first-time candidates. Criterion EC-CC17 sets two thresholds. At Leadership, at least 95% of reported Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and at least one Scope 3 category must be verified or assured by a third party.

At A List, that rises to 100% of reported Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and at least 70% of reported Scope 3 emissions. Assurance is booked in weeks rather than days, so the decision belongs in spring, not August.

Targets are gated too. Under EC-CC25, an A List response in most sectors needs a near-term Scope 1 and 2 target either approved as science-based by the SBTi, or delivering at least a 4.2% absolute annual reduction between the end of the base year and the end of the target period. And the response has to be public: EC-CC32 makes a public submission a condition of Leadership.

Sector allocation is worth understanding too. CDP's Activity Classification System assigns a questionnaire sector to any activity generating at least 20% of total revenue, treats the largest of those as your primary sector, and scores you on that one only. Answer the other sector questions if they apply, but they will not move the grade.

What the 2026 Questionnaire Asks

Modules cover governance, business strategy and environmental performance, with some questions issue-specific and some sector-specific. Every company answers climate change questions. Companies on the full corporate questionnaire also receive supplementary plastics and biodiversity questions.

Forests and water security work differently. You answer them if a requester asked, if CDP's Industry Impact Classification flags your activities as high impact for those issues, if you identified substantive issues yourself during questionnaire set-up, or if you opt in voluntarily.

Scoring in 2026 covers climate change, forests and water security. Plastics, biodiversity and the new ocean questions are unscored. That makes them a low-risk place to build capability before they start to count. The SME questionnaire is scored for climate change alone, and 2026 is the first year an SME can earn an SME A score, which CDP says plainly is not equivalent to a full corporate A.

For anyone mapping internal data to specific fields, revenue is disclosed at question 1.4.1 on the full corporate questionnaire and 14.4.1 on the SME version. The revenue breakdown entered during set-up is not shared with external stakeholders; it decides which questions you see. The 2026 scoring introduction sets out the thresholds behind each band.

And there is a new tool this year. An AI feature built with Briink lets disclosers upload documents such as annual reports so the system can suggest draft answers, which you then review, edit or ignore. It is being introduced in phases from June 2026.

Dates, Fees and Who Pays

The response window opened in the week of 15 June 2026. The scoring deadline is 16 September 2026 at 11:59pm International Dateline West, a date CDP also fixes in its terms of disclosure. Responses can still be submitted and edited until the final deadline in the week commencing 26 October 2026, but nothing filed after 16 September is scored. Scores go to disclosers and then to the public in the week of 30 November 2026. A limited number of paid on-demand extensions is available at CDP's discretion, and must be requested by 29 September.

Payment comes before the submit button. A UK-headquartered company pays £2,450 on the Foundation tier or £5,985 on Enhanced, both excluding local taxes, following a global increase of roughly 5% for 2026. The Essential tier is not offered in the UK. Enhanced buys access to 100 public company responses of your choice and a comparative analysis report benchmarking you against ten peers you select.

But the fee is the same whether you complete the SME questionnaire or the full corporate one, and it is not refundable.

Exemptions turn on who asked. A company requested only by a supply chain member, a banks programme member, a private markets member or RE100 pays nothing. A company requested by CDP's capital markets signatories, or one volunteering as a self-selected company, pays. Organisations based in Ukraine are currently exempt.

One eligibility rule catches international groups out. Corporate responses are scored only in English, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.

How CDP Sits Alongside UK Reporting

SECR is the statutory one. Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting was introduced by the Companies (Directors' Report) and Limited Liability Partnerships (Energy and Carbon Report) Regulations 2018, and it puts energy use and greenhouse gas figures inside the Directors' Report.

It applies to large UK companies and LLPs, meaning those meeting two of three tests: 250 employees, £36m turnover, £18m balance sheet total. The government's environmental reporting guidelines set out what each duty list covers. The Scope 1 and Scope 2 numbers SECR produces are the same ones CDP asks for.

UK SRS is the one still moving. The Department for Business and Trade published UK SRS S1 and UK SRS S2 on 25 February 2026, the UK-endorsed versions of IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, following a consultation that drew 209 responses.

Both are available for voluntary use. The FCA consulted on requiring listed companies to report against UK SRS for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027, with Scope 3 treated on a comply-or-explain basis; that consultation closed on 20 March 2026, with a policy statement expected in autumn 2026.

It is a proposal, not law, and should be read that way until the FCA confirms its rules.

CDP's questionnaire is already aligned with IFRS S2, the ESRS and the TNFD recommendations, and CDP says the 2026 cycle deepens alignment with the TNFD, the Global Reporting Initiative, the Science Based Targets Network, the GHG Protocol and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Global Commitment on Plastics. One Scope 1 and 2 inventory feeds SECR, a CDP response and a UK SRS S2 disclosure.

Where the Answers Break

Four failure points recur, and none of them is about the writing.

Scope 2 reported one way. CDP's criterion EC-CC14 asks, at question 7.7, for a location-based figure built on grid average emissions factors and, where applicable, a market-based figure reflecting your electricity contracts.

A market-based number that collapses towards zero after a switch to a renewable tariff, while consumption sits flat, is not wrong, but it needs the location-based figure beside it. Otherwise the response reads as though it is hiding the grid.

Spend-based Scope 3 mistaken for progress. Multiply supplier spend by an industry factor and your reported emissions fall every time procurement negotiates a discount. Nothing physical has changed. Defra's spend-based multipliers are a legitimate fallback where activity data is missing, and gov.uk is explicit that users should report the methods they used, which is the same thing assurance providers and CDP scorers want to see.

Conversion factors from the wrong year. DESNZ publishes the UK greenhouse gas conversion factors annually, and the 2026 set landed on 11 June 2026 alongside a separate major changes report. Applying a new set retrospectively across a three-year trend, or mixing vintages between sites, breaks comparability in exactly the place a reviewer checks first. Earlier years stay available in the gov.uk collection.

Exclusions left undocumented. Criterion EC-CC13 allows no relevant exclusions from any scope at A List level, unless they follow a recent acquisition or merger and are explained at question 7.4. A site dropped because a meter reading never arrived will surface in the assurance report long before it surfaces in the score.

Six Steps to Get Right in a First CDP Cycle

1. Check the portal for who requested you. That single fact decides whether you pay the admin fee and which themes you are asked about.
2. Fix the reporting boundary against the consolidated accounts before answering a single question.
3. Reconcile Scope 1 and Scope 2 against whatever is already published in the Directors' Report. A gap between the two documents is the sort of thing an analyst notices and asks about.
4. Decide on verification early, and scope it at 100% of Scope 1 and 2 if the A List is the target.
5. Pay the fee or apply the exemption in the portal, because the questionnaire cannot be submitted until that is settled.
6. Submit several days before 16 September. Portal load on deadline day is not a recognised excuse.

More Information

Gaia's carbon accounting software measures Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions against the GHG Protocol using the annual UK conversion factors published by Defra and DESNZ, and produces SECR reports from the same data set.

The SECR reporting page covers the statutory disclosure in more detail. Software improves the quality and traceability of a disclosure; it does not secure a particular CDP score or assurance outcome.

For the underlying sources:

• Environmental reporting guidelines, including SECR requirements and the UK government greenhouse gas conversion factors, both on gov.uk
• UK SRS S2: Climate-related Disclosures, Department for Business and Trade, February 2026
• CDP Disclosure 2026 hub, with the cycle's key dates and questionnaire changes
• CDP FAQs, including the 2026 admin fee table by region and the scoring bands
• CDP Climate Change Scoring Essential Criteria 2026 and the Full Corporate Scoring Introduction 2026
• CDP scores and A Lists

FAQs

Is CDP disclosure mandatory in the UK?

No. CDP is run by a charity rather than a regulator, and no UK statute requires a response to it. The pressure is commercial: investors and large buyers request disclosure, and for 2026 CDP's capital markets signatories asked over 43,000 organisations to respond. SECR is the statutory UK obligation, and it sits inside the Directors' Report.

Where can I see another company’s CDP disclosure?

Start with the company's own website, since many publish their CDP score report or summarise the result in their annual sustainability reporting. CDP's scores page carries public, parent-level theme scores. Check the terms first: CDP restricts use of its scores to internal, non-commercial purposes unless you obtain a licence, which affects what you can do with a competitor's grade.

What does CDP disclosure cost a UK company?

CDP's 2026 admin fee for a UK-headquartered company is £2,450 on the Foundation tier or £5,985 on Enhanced, both excluding local taxes. Enhanced adds access to 100 public company responses and a comparative analysis report against ten peers you choose. Neither is refundable. For most companies the fee is smaller than the internal cost of assembling the data behind it.

How does the SME questionnaire differ from the full corporate one?

The SME questionnaire is shorter and scored for climate change only, while the full corporate questionnaire covers climate change, forests and water security and includes sector-specific questions. From 2026 an SME can achieve an SME A score for climate change. CDP is explicit that this is not equivalent to a full corporate A, and recommends the full questionnaire for companies engaging capital markets or responding to customers.

Does a CDP score count as assurance?

No. A score reflects what a company reported, assessed against CDP's published methodology, not an independent audit of the underlying figures. Assurance runs the other way: third-party verification of Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions is what CDP's essential criteria require for A List eligibility. Companies wanting assurance on their inventory engage a verification body separately.

What happens if we submit after 16 September 2026?

The response is still accepted and published up to the final deadline in the week commencing 26 October 2026, but it will not be scored. For most companies that removes the point of responding, because the investor or customer who asked will be looking for a score in December. Paid extensions to the scoring deadline exist at CDP's discretion and must be requested by 29 September.

This article explains how CDP disclosure and UK reporting rules work. It is not legal, financial or accounting advice, and it does not guarantee any disclosure, scoring or assurance outcome. For a decision about your own reporting obligations, speak to a qualified adviser or to the relevant authority.