Latest / Activating Sustainability / Activating Sustainability | Ep 66: CDP 2026

Transcript

Activating Sustainability | Ep 66: CDP 2026 · Activating Sustainability

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:08
  Speaker B: Hello and welcome to Activating Sustainability the Anthesis Podcast. I'm your host Chris Peterson. Today we're exploring the 2026 CDP reporting process with Raquel Williams and Justine Vandermoten, who are both in our strategy transformation and reporting team, but sit on opposite sides of the pond. As you'll hear in the podcast, we discuss where CDP sits in the current reporting landscape, how to decide if you should be reporting what you need to know for 2026, if you are, and critically, how to get the most value from your efforts. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for doing this.
• 0:40
  Speaker C: Thank you. Thanks for having us, Chris.
• 0:42
  Speaker A: It's great to be here.
• 0:44
  Speaker B: Fantastic. Well, maybe the place to start is it feels like the reporting and disclosure landscape has changed so dramatically over the last few years and we'd love to hear where you see CDP fit in within it today.
• 0:59
  Speaker A: I think with the changes to the reporting landscape, it's obviously affecting each company so differently depending on the maturity of their sustainability reporting, depending on the maturity of their programs in general. And CDP has been this longstanding, like really well regarded method of disclosure, getting information out to your data users. And I think that one of the values in continuing to report to CDP is that like flexing your reporting muscle. So it asks for a really high level of detail that you may not otherwise be disclosing in your regular reporting exercises. And that can be really helpful at maintaining the relationships with your subject matter experts that you need to be able to get the data to disclose if and when your company is in scope for regulatory disclosure or you want to otherwise increase your voluntary disclosures. That is the first thought that comes to mind for me. But I'm curious Justine's thinking.
• 2:15
  Speaker C: Yeah, definitely agree. I think the regulatory reporting landscape has been a bit turbulent over the last couple of years. Lots of changes, lots of delays. And as Raquel said, CDP feels like more of a steady constant that companies can tap into for four months of the year. They know it's going to be quite a detailed and full on period of time, but it gives them that constant to really focus on their reporting. And I think for some companies that have not yet reached all the regulatory reporting yet, it can be a great way to prepare for that. So if they're maybe a couple of years out or a year out, actually turning to CDP can really be a great preparation step for getting closer to mandatory reporting and it can be a useful benchmark exercise as well, or a bit of a gap analysis, let's say, to see where you match up or where you should match up against sort of environmental disclosures or what's considered best practice for environmental disclosures.
• 3:20
  Speaker A: One thing that brings to mind regarding the regulatory piece and the crosswalk to other frameworks is that CDP has done a lot to maintain relevancy in this changing landscape. And one of those things that they're doing is producing mapping documents with other frameworks like TCFD, like ESRSE1, IFRS, S2, et cetera. There are others as well, and these can be even a helpful map. If you've completed a CDP response already and you look at how CDP has mapped to these other frameworks and you're preparing for a TCFD disclosure climate report that you haven't previously done, it can be a source and input into those types of documents. It functions as a collection of already publicly reported data. And also it can be a source for future reports, which is helpful in some cases.
• 4:24
  Speaker C: And they are really expanding out. I think traditionally it was just climate change, carbon focused and then they brought in water and forests and then it was those themes for a good chunk of time. But in the last couple of years we've seen plastics come through, biodiversity come through, now oceans come through. So they're really trying, I guess, to tap into lots of different subjects and areas and topics now. And for some companies that can be really useful, that pool to tap into and see what type of data, see what type of questions come up that would help them understand what they should maybe be responding to within their reporting.
• 5:04
  Speaker B: And I'd be curious to hear as you guys think about timelines. Right. I think CSRD was a big wake up call in terms of trying to do a lot in a very short period of time that's now been stressed out a little bit. And I'm curious as you think about how long does it take to report your first CDP or get good at it versus some of these more kind of rigorous regulations that we see on the horizon.
• 5:26
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's a really good question. I think in terms of building up towards a really strong CDP response, I think it's can take a bit of time. I think companies can do it straight away and have a go at cdp. It is very well structured and you can see alongside the questions what the reporting guidance is, how they score the response. So you get a lot of guidance around it. So I think companies don't necessarily need to go in thinking that they have all the preparation. There are obviously some data and some bits they will need to gather, but they can definitely have a go at CDP for their first year. And to be honest, I think if companies are on the fence about doing doing it, I think having a go is a great idea to really learn the ropes of it. Obviously it is voluntary as well, but I think to really understand the ropes and to kind of build up that response, I think it does take a couple of years. There are lots of questions CDP do want you to respond in certain ways for certain questions, which I think can take quite a bit of time, you know, a couple of years to build up that knowledge and really understand. Okay, yeah, I get it now. This is what CDP are looking for, right?
• 6:35
  Speaker B: And I think as you were saying earlier, Raquel too, just building that muscle of like, oh, where do the electricity bills go and who's paying for what? Right Are those kind of insightful new experiences. And I'd be curious to hear thinking about kind of the opposite sides of the ponds that you're on. One of the things that in previous conversations both of you highlighted is that some organizations are pulling back on the public nature of their CDP responses and curious how that's showing up or how that's feeding into some of the thinking around cdp.
• 7:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, there has been one change over the last year or so, which is that CDP's responses or companies responses to CDP are no longer just available for download on the website. Responses are still considered to be public in that anybody with a license can access them. But the content is less public, I would say, than it has been in years past, although it is still again available to folks with a license. But for companies that are wanting to pull back, what I've seen work has been to submit for an unscored response. So it decreases the visibility in that you are no longer maybe highlighting your A score, B score, et cetera, in your sustainability reports, on your sustainability website, et cetera. But the response is still being made to cdp. I think the other piece that can be valuable as companies are navigating where to put their resources with the potential regulatory requirements down the pipeline, is that it allows you to step back from the strictness of the scoring criteria. So if you were previously really committed to getting that B, and for whatever reason you've had to shift your resources, you might have a little more leniency. You can meet the needs of your disclosure requests without the stress of a score, if that makes sense.
• 8:51
  Speaker C: And you can see why companies would maybe take that approach, especially if they are responding to different regulatory reporting frameworks now and other standards, other rankers and raters out there. I think some companies potentially just want there to be like one reporting ecosystem and not feel so rigid into one one standard and responding in such specific ways. Actually it is better if what we're seeing in our sustainability report is also exactly what we're seeing in our CDP report and exactly what we're seeing in CSRD or other frameworks and not having to completely write new answers every single time for all these different standards and frameworks and actually maybe not going for that scored response, as Raquel said, and trying to be so strict about it just presents that more flexibility really to have everything a bit more cohesive and have that one reporting ecosystem which in an ideal world would be so great if that was the way it worked. But I think that approach to me signals maybe that's what companies want to do.
• 9:58
  Speaker B: Right? And that cross mapping you guys mentioned earlier is really helpful in terms of understanding where that kind of fits and maybe it's the kind of best version of the ecosystem we can expect. So I know you all are advising lots of companies about do we, do we not? And I think this has been a really helpful element to hear that it's maybe not this binary yes or no, but also a little bit of like how do we approach that? So I'm curious, how do you set up that conversation or provide guidance to individuals about thinking about are we doing this this year? Are we doing it the whole way or pulling all the way back?
• 10:32
  Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's, I think a lot of the time we've got them to think about why they've sort of done it in the first place. So for some companies they are requested to do it there. There is a supply chain element to CDP and companies, customers request them to do it. So we do often discuss the risk. If you didn't do it, where would that expectation of customers go? Some companies are requested to do it by their investors as well. So that, that can be a piece. So definitely thinking about some of the reasons. And if they did just generally if they did just stop disclosing reputationally, what would that potentially do? And thinking through some of the steps there, another one is also just looking at some of their peers, do they respond and if they've gone for public scores, what are their scores saying? And again, if they pulled back, what potentially would that mean? So I think there's lots of different ways that you can look at it and talk through options and what the risks are really.
• 11:31
  Speaker A: And I'd also add that we see quite a few companies or reporting teams or sustainability teams, whoever's managing the CDP response leverage the score as a way to communicate internally with their executives. So an A score might be really important in having a shorthand to speak about the maturity of your program, the comparison between your program and peers, without having to pull a full benchmark on a given CDP reporting requirement, for example. And I think that is also a factor we like to take into account when deciding how to prioritize cdp. If the decision is sort of up
• 12:20
  Speaker B: for grabs, that's great. And so maybe shifting to if people are reporting to CDP this year, are convinced through this conversation that they are going to give it a go, as you said, Justine, what do they need to know about CDP in 2026 in general and then maybe what's new this year?
• 12:41
  Speaker A: I think what we are seeing on our end so far, and it is still early in the season, the portal has not even opened yet. The portal will open in mid June, at which point supply chain requests, which Justine mentioned, will also be semi finalized. For companies, what we're seeing is a set of pervasive changes that are relatively low impact. So with the integration of oceans into modules 1 through 5 and 13, there have been adjustments to the questionnaire to accommodate response to that theme, including changes to some of the columns, for example. But these changes won't necessarily impact companies who aren't disclosing to Ocean's, which we don't expect that most companies, at least from I think who we're working with, most companies are not opting to disclose to the Ocean's theme at this point. So there are some good news with regards to the scoring criteria. The essential criteria is relatively unchanged and in fact in some places it's actually been made more accommodating, for example, to make space for companies who are not legally allowed to report certain pieces of information. The scoring criteria now makes exceptions or accommodations for those organizations in those positions, which is great news since the essential criteria can be a huge barrier for companies who are focused on advancing score. I'm curious what Justine is seeing on her side.
• 14:24
  Speaker C: Yeah, agreed. The essential criteria is a big relief I think, especially for some of our leadership scoring companies. So that's great. And I think some of the changes that Raquel mentioned, some of the column updates and those kind of pieces, one thing that we're seeing all of that mean is that they are leaning towards more companies using the portal directly. So you can. And that is quite a big change in some ways for some companies. A lot of our clients like to work on an offline version, but the way that they've made Some of the changes, particularly those sort of nitty gritty ones around column updates and so you can only make certain selections. So all those conditions lead us down a path of they are wanting companies to use the CDP portal more and more. So go into the portal, be updating responses in there. So that's an interesting change. They're obviously wanting to, you know, draw you in a bit more to regularly using the portal as opposed to offline. So a bit of a change that companies I think will need to be aware of. If they are used to word versions, they will need to also be checking the portal to make sure that, yeah, their responses are okay.
• 15:36
  Speaker B: Maybe just to pick at that. Will organizations still be able to use a word version to get approvals and redlines, et cetera, or do they need their legal teams going into the portal to approve copy?
• 15:48
  Speaker C: They can still use a word version, so they will be able to still download the response and get legal teams to update and review and comment and things like that. It'll just be that companies need to just check that what they are selecting can be selected in the portal. So there'll be a bit of cross
• 16:07
  Speaker A: checking going on and it is unfortunate that at least at this point the portal doesn't capture our chain of edits, it doesn't capture the decision making process. Right. So even if a legal team is reviewing in the portal, which I think would be pretty exceptional, but if they were reviewing in the portal and they find themselves asking why did we make this dropdown selection when technically we could also make another or why did we not select an additional dropdown selection? None of that decision making process is captured in the portal, which means it also has to be captured in another location because I mean provided your legal team is wanting that level of reviews, the decision making process would need to be documented in another location, if not drafting in word.
• 17:00
  Speaker B: Wonderful. And maybe now looking ahead to maybe after CDP or as you go into the CDP season, would love to hear how can organizations get more value beyond just reporting to CDP from the effort of developing the report for cdp?
• 17:20
  Speaker C: I think one really great way to do that is when you are reviewing the submission against the scoring criteria. So we do a lot of mock scoring during the season, so run the response through our in house mock scoring tools and can give our clients a mock score result ahead of submission. And I think those can be really useful exercises to obviously see where companies are matching up against the scoring methodology and the different scores, but also shifting the mindset a bit beyond that. So okay, yeah, you're potentially sitting at B, here are your list of gaps, but actually focusing on okay, these are the gaps, but how can you actually, not just for the CDP response, how can you actually take these forward into your wider sustainability strategy and really shifting that mindset of not just being all about the CDP scores?
• 18:14
  Speaker A: So what we've done with some clients has been to map their CDP responses from the previous year against their targeted disclosure framework. So in many cases here in the US that's TCFD as well as esrse1ifrss2 in mapping against those disclosure requirements. If there are places where you can evaluate your CDP response to see if it's in excess of those disclosure requirements, that can be a value add as far as within the reporting season itself, aligning your CDP response already to what you expect to be the upper limit of your disclosure. Additionally, I think a crosswalk is internally between your climate report, between your sustainability report and your CDP response at the start of the season or after the end of the season can allow you to more efficiently pull information between all of your reporting locations. And I think that's kind of the goal, right, is to really just have CDP disclosure ready material so that the reporting lift over the four months of the season isn't as stressful as it otherwise would be. So having a crosswalk of your internal documents can really help with efficiency and I think that's also a great way to close out the season if you're looking for value over the next nine months or eight months until the season begins again to make the lift easier in the next year.
• 19:55
  Speaker C: Yeah, completely agree. I think that that crosswalk is a great idea and it goes back to what we were seeing around one reporting ecosystem. Try and use the materials that you already have for your sustainability reporting and really try and match up as much as what you're seeing in other places to your CDP response now because it'll just make everything so much easier and more efficient going forward. And I think also at the end of the season trying, although everybody needs a break when we get to the end in September, which is completely fair enough. But also try not to just completely close that CDP door at the end and just say, okay, that's it done now, we'll regroup in April or May when the new questionnaire comes out, because you've just put all that effort in and if you've done something like a mock score throughout the season, you've got a good view of what your gaps are for that year and maybe what you could be working on. So lift those and start to come up with a plan around those that can help drive wider strategy forward.
• 21:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. And just to bring back a comment you made earlier Raquel, about using the scores to engage leadership within the organization. I think Justine, you were talking about engaging customers and investors and mapping as competitors and I think that why piece is so valuable to see tied in here as we're wrapping up on time. I would love to hear if you have a successful practice, an insight, a tip, or a trick that you would love everybody to be adopting or looking to use as they go into the 2026 season.
• 21:35
  Speaker A: The first thing that comes to mind for me is around engaging subject matter experts internally. CDP is funny because it aggregates information from other disclosure frameworks. Some of the terminology can be broad in that it's trying to accommodate definitions from multiple frameworks within a new CDP specific term. When you give your CDP response and ask for input from even your GHG SME who are deep in the work of emissions accounting, some of the terminology might be new or weird. I think the practice and the recommendation here is to ensure that a you're able to provide the definitions that CDP provides to your team, but b even to have a preseason alignment session with your SMEs so that you can together identify the terminology that is foreign to them or unfamiliar to both of you so that you can from the get go already have a shared definitions when working on your reporting which helps prevent bumps in the road later on.
• 22:53
  Speaker C: Yeah, I definitely agree with that and I think thinking about the other end of the season. So right at the end I think having end of season wrap up call okay maybe a couple of weeks after give everyone a break but Again invite those SMEs to that as well and that can be a finish the season. This is our response. This is where we believe we've got gaps from this year and this is how we brainstorm almost how we want to tackle those gaps and how that can help push us on in our sustainability program and our targets. So as we said, just closing that CDP door but putting in a catch up a couple of weeks after the season and bringing back those SMEs because they do a lot of the time hold a lot of the data, hold a lot of the action and can be ones that help you progress on certain areas. So I think it would yeah great to bring them back in, show them what all the effort's been for and then really come up with a plan to start to work towards some of the bigger gaps that have been uncovered throughout the season.
• 24:01
  Speaker B: Wonderful. Anything else that comes to mind?
• 24:04
  Speaker C: Maybe just one thing. Interested to know what you think about this as well. Raquel is I think it helps sometimes to not be so fixated on a score when it comes to cdp. And and I think sometimes that can almost work against progress and trying to align responses of how you're reporting in other places and try not to be so rigid around the way you respond to something or the selection you make just because you want a certain score. Obviously the scores are important and it's great that some companies want to be ambitious, but it's also important that companies respond in the ways that make sense to them for their business and for their goals and what it is that they want to achieve. And sometimes focusing so much on a score can start to dilute that a little bit.
• 24:56
  Speaker B: That ties back really well to your question at the beginning of why are we doing this?
• 25:00
  Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
• 25:02
  Speaker A: And I think if you are able to relax off that score, focus a little bit, then you're also more likely to be able to make use of pre existing STING disclosures without having to stretch or in early September decide to include a new disclosure data point that's going to cost the whole team a bunch of hours because you're really angling for a score. It can, as we've talked about, relieve some of the stress, but help make the lift lighter and the crosswalk with your other existing reporting more substantial.
• 25:37
  Speaker B: Well, that's wonderful. I feel like there's so many threads that'd be wonderful to pull at and dig into the depth of your knowledge, but maybe we'll wrap it up there. And just want to say thank you both so much for these insights and the time and just wish you and everybody else who is reporting to CBP over the summer a smooth reporting season and excited to see how people get that additional value from the kind of incredible effort that goes into it.
• 26:04
  Speaker A: Thank you so much.
• 26:05
  Speaker C: Thanks Chris. Thank you.
• 26:07
  Speaker B: Take care and thank you for listening. Be sure to check out the resources, blogs and LinkedIn posts linked in the show notes and shared throughout the season on the anthesis website@anthesisgroup.com thanks again and take care. Of.