What's New with CDP in 2025?

CDP continues to be a strong opportunity for companies to disclose their environmental impacts to meet investor and market demands. While 2024 marked a larger shift in CDP scoring and structure, this year's changes are more minimal. Read on below to see what's new in 2025 for CDP. 

Information Changes in 2025 

• For 2025, the CDP questionnaire will remain largely unchanged, maintaining the questions, structure, and scoring methodology from 2024, ensuring stability after the significant 2024 updates.
• Updates will be limited to clarifying wording, providing better guidance, and defining key terms within the current question set. See the comprehensive list of key changes here.
• Companies can continue to respond to the Biodiversity and Plastics modules, though these will remain un-scored for 2025.
  

Fast Facts:

• What is CDP? 
  • CDP is a non-profit that maintains a global disclosure system of environmental impacts for investors, companies, cities, states, and regions. CDP requests information from companies and cities to help them measure and manage their environmental impacts.
    

• Why complete a CDP questionnaire?
  • As a company, responding to a CDP questionnaire is strong commitment to mitigating climate change and CDP offers a comprehensive framework to assess the risks posed to your company by climate change, and the opportunities to overcome them.
  • A CDP score also establishes a valuable benchmark that companies can use for goal setting and competitive analysis. It is a chance to benchmark against your peers with a quantifiable measure of performance from an objective third-party.
  • Over the past decade, CDP A List companies delivered significantly stronger financial results than their market peers, with an average stock gain outperformance of 6%, indicating that the market values transparency and ambition.
  • Over 24,800 companies disclosed through CDP in 2024, approximately a 6% increase in submissions from 2023, representing two-thirds of global market capitalization

• How will CDP help my organization?
  • CDP will enable you to understand your exposure to climate risk, identify the measures needed to tackle it, and get a jump on any upcoming regulations. CDP aligns closely with IFRS S2 and TCFD, and can be used to inform these disclosures among other key environmental- and climate-related frameworks and standards.
  • Disclosure is the first step towards action. A poor CDP score or no CDP score at all risks your business facing difficult questions about lack of transparency and a tangible approach to sustainability. An improvement in scores is a boost to any company’s reputation and climate credibility.  

• Can scores radically improve over consecutive years?
  • Absolutely. Improvement is achievable by setting (and reaching) specific targets, seeing opportunity for innovation, and integrating sustainability across your organization.
  • A detailed knowledge of CDP's reporting guidance and scoring methodology, which saw significant changes in 2024, can make a major difference. Third Economy is here to help. 

• What are the key CDP deadlines in 2025?
  • Week of June 16: 2025 response window opens
  • Week of September 15: Deadline for scored submission
  • Week of November 17: Deadline for un-scored submission and submission amendments 

Should I Prepare A CDP Questionnaire in 2025?

Following the sweeping changes to both the questionnaire and user experience in 2024, the upcoming 2025 CDP reporting cycle is expected to be a smoother process, providing disclosers with an opportunity to apply lessons learned.

Third Economy continues to advise companies to consider responding to a CDP questionnaire, especially those who have received requests from investors, customers, and/or suppliers. We also advise that companies aiming to better assess their climate-related risks and impacts or contribute to one of the world’s largest databases of related information, respond to this questionnaire.

CDP aligns fully with the IFRS S2 Standard and TCFD, aligns partially with TNFD, and is currently reviewing its alignment with ESRS and the SEC climate disclosure rule. Companies looking to align with these reporting frameworks and standards should consider utilizing CDP as a resource and alignment exercise. 

Disclaimer: The information provided does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available are for general informational purposes only.