What’s Next For CDP? Changes and Updates Coming to the Carbon Disclosure Project

Anthesis recently attended CDP’s bi-annual Consultancy Partner Briefing. Here are the key takeaways, along with some other pertinent updates related to CDP, climate action and corporate reporting. 

CDP’s 2017 questionnaire and reporting cycle

Rest assured, following a substantial overhaul of the Climate questionnaire and scoring methodology, there are no major changes planned for 2017! Other than an addition to some questions that will enable companies to report on their progress since the Paris Agreement and some minor tweaks in wording and structure for other sections, the Climate questionnaire and scoring methodology will be consistent with 2016, and the Water and Forestry questionnaires will likely also see only very minor, if any, changes.

Dates to consider

On Oct 25^th, CDP Climate scores were released, including the Climate A List, with some country reports now available. CDP will be hosting their annual S&P500 Report Launch event in NYC on December 5^th and a Canada Report Launch event on December 8^th in Toronto. We’ll be attending both of these events and hope to see you there! Complete company-by-company scores will be included in these country-level reports and will be released on these dates.

And some approximate dates to add into your diary:

• CDP Water report, A List and scores will be published mid-November.
• CDP Supply chain score feedback emails will be sent mid-November. The report and A List will be published in January 2017.
• CDP Forests report and A List will be published early December, with scores for eligible companies that submitted publicly.
• CDP’s new initiative coming in Q4 2017 will be called “Reimagining Disclosure in a post-Paris World”.

Direction of travel

CDP is poised to evolve its core mission to get climate, water and forestry more integrated into the global economic system, and will be shifting its focus to better facilitate achievement of the goals and commitments agreed in Paris. This will be achieved via expansion of its disclosure processes, and making the data it generates more accessible and useable to its key stakeholders (investors, corporates, government, etc.).

This will involve the following changes:

• Introduction of sector-based questionnaires for the 2018 reporting cycle (i.e. reporting financial/calendar year 2017 activity) for the following sectors: energy (oil and gas, coal, and utilities), transport, materials, and agriculture. Companies not listed in these sectors will receive the ‘standard’ questionnaire. Sector-specific questionnaires may have unique scoring, questions and metrics.
• Integration of some or all of the metrics and reporting expectations from the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) into questionnaires.
• Addition of questions that will focus on forward-looking statements and some forward-looking metrics across Climate, Water and Forestry questionnaires, along with a question evaluating a company’s readiness for a low carbon transition. There will also be more alignment across the three questionnaires to reduce redundancy.

At the Consultancy Partner Briefing, We Mean Business – a coalition of organizations working with the world’s most influential businesses and investors – also provided an update on program progress across all of their initiatives. Our primary takeaway, beyond the significant adoption rate and number of corporate commitments that have been made, is the launch of a new initiative focused on Water Security.

As a CDP Consultancy Partner, Anthesis is following changes to CDP closely and will be available to support you during the next reporting cycle. This past year, Anthesis supported more than 25 responding companies complete the Climate questionnaire alone.  Please get in touch with Josh Whitney, Partner and Practice Leader, by emailing Josh.Whitney@anthesisgroup.com if you’d like to discuss CDP and related topics further.