CDP questionnaire 2026: the 13 modules, what changed, and the data each one needs

Last updated August 2026. Most guides to the CDP questionnaire describe it as a form to fill in. It is more useful to read it as two different jobs stapled together. Modules 1 to 5 and 13 are narrative: governance, strategy, risk assessment, sign-off. Your sustainability and legal teams write those once and refine them each year. Modules 6 to 12 are quantitative, and they want a greenhouse gas inventory with its boundary, methods, emission factors and data quality all stated. That second half is where responses run late, because the numbers cannot be written, only assembled. Our carbon accounting software works on that side: it classifies accounts payable and utility data into a scope-by-scope inventory and keeps each figure tied to the invoice that produced it.

CDP merged its separate climate change, forests and water questionnaires into one integrated corporate questionnaire in 2024, and the 2026 version keeps that shape. The module numbering below is CDP's own, taken from its full corporate questionnaire overview. Reading it as a structure rather than a list of questions tells you which teams you need and in what order.

Two rows there do more work than the rest. Module 6 looks administrative and is not: your consolidation approach decides whether a leased warehouse is your Scope 1 or your Scope 3, and changing it mid-cycle invalidates everything downstream. Our guide to operational versus financial control covers how to choose. Module 7 is where the scoring weight sits, and it is the module you cannot write your way through.

Before you answer anything, CDP runs a questionnaire setup during onboarding. You answer screening questions about your sector, your headcount and revenue, your activities, and which environmental issues you are disclosing on. The portal then builds a questionnaire that contains only the modules and questions that apply to you.

The rules behind that filter are worth knowing before you plan resourcing, because they decide how big your response actually is:

The practical consequence: do the setup early, then download your tailored questionnaire and count the quantitative questions before you commit to a timeline. A company that opted into forests and water is running three inventories, not one.

CDP publishes two corporate questionnaires. The full corporate questionnaire carries sector-specific datapoints and is built for large organizations. The SME questionnaire has fewer, simplified datapoints. Eligibility is a hard threshold, not a preference, and it runs on headcount and revenue.

One 2026 change matters here more than it sounds. SMEs are now eligible for an A score on climate change, which they were not before no matter how good the disclosure was. If you are a smaller supplier answering because a large customer asked, a strong SME response is now worth something visible rather than being capped by the questionnaire you were on.

The 2026 questionnaire is an evolution of 2025, not a rebuild, so a prior response is still a good starting point. Version 1.0 of CDP's overview document was released April 20, 2026, which means the real wording has been public since spring and you can prepare against it rather than guess.

Nothing in that list changes the emissions work. Module 7 still wants the same inventory it wanted last year, which is why the sensible reading of the 2026 changes is that the narrative modules moved and the quantitative one did not. How the changes translate into points is covered in our CDP scoring methodology guide.

Module 7 is the only module whose answers you cannot draft. Every figure in it has to trace back to something: a meter reading, a fuel invoice, a supplier contract, a line in accounts payable. CDP asks not just for the number but for the method behind it, and it scores the method.

The fastest honest route through the Scope 3 half of that is a spend screen first: classify the accounts payable file to the 15 categories, apply input-output factors, and you have a defensible number for every category in days plus a clear read on which two or three carry your footprint. Then upgrade only those to activity or supplier data. The mechanics are in calculating Scope 3 from spend, and the reasoning for which ones to deepen is in Scope 3 materiality assessment.

The CDP questionnaire is the annual environmental disclosure form run by CDP, a not-for-profit that collects corporate environmental data on behalf of requesting investors and corporate purchasers. It covers climate change, forests, water security, plastics, biodiversity and, from 2026, ocean. Companies complete it in CDP's online portal, the response is scored on a band from A to D-, and the result becomes part of a public record that customers, lenders and rating agencies consult. CDP collects this data for over 640 institutional capital markets signatories holding a combined US$127 trillion in assets, and 270 or more major purchasers with over US$6.4 trillion in procurement spend.

The full corporate questionnaire has 13 modules. Modules 1 to 6 and module 13 are integrated, meaning their questions cover more than one environmental issue at once. Modules 7 to 11 are the environmental performance modules and each is specific to one issue area: climate change, forests, water security, plastics and biodiversity. Module 12 is an integrated, sector-specific environmental performance module shown only to financial services organizations. You will not see all 13; the setup step removes the ones that do not apply to you.

Nobody is compelled by law. CDP disclosure is voluntary in the legal sense and becomes effectively mandatory through commercial pressure: an investor holding your stock or a large customer running a supplier program requests your response, and declining is visible, because non-response is recorded against you as "did not disclose". For US companies the more common trigger in 2026 is a customer procurement team rather than an investor. That is a different obligation from a statute like California SB 253, which compels reporting by law above a revenue threshold. Both want a GHG Protocol inventory, so the sensible move for a company facing both is one inventory reported twice. Our climate disclosure software overview maps which regimes catch which companies.

The 2026 response window opened the week of June 15. The date that matters is the scoring deadline: submit after it and your response is still published but is recorded as "not scored", which is usually the entire reason you were asked to disclose. CDP's own website states the scoring deadline as 16 September 2026, while its guidance document lists it as "week of September 14". Those are the same milestone described two ways, which is why third-party summaries disagree on the date; plan against September 16 and treat the surrounding week as the cutoff. The final deadline for unscored responses and amendments falls in the week commencing October 26, 2026, after which the questionnaire closes. The week-by-week plan is in our CDP reporting deadline guide.

CDP publishes the questionnaire, the reporting guidance and the scoring methodology on its own site each cycle, and you can download a version tailored to your profile after completing the setup questions on CDP's guidance page. The tailored download excludes modules you have not opted into, which makes it far more useful than the complete document for planning. Read it alongside the Scoring Introduction, because the guidance tells you what to answer and the scoring documents tell you what the answer is worth. Copies circulating on third-party sites are often a cycle out of date, so take them from CDP.

For a first response, plan on months rather than weeks, and expect most of it to be inventory work rather than writing. The narrative modules are a few days of drafting for someone who knows the business. Module 7 is the long pole: a company with no existing GHG inventory is building a boundary, a base year, Scope 1 and 2 from meters and fuel, and a 15-category Scope 3 screen, usually across finance, facilities and procurement. Second responses are dramatically shorter, but only if the classification, factors and source documents from year one are still findable. That is the argument for keeping the inventory in a system rather than a spreadsheet folder.

If you are choosing tooling rather than reading up, start with CDP reporting software for the vendor question, or best carbon accounting software to compare the market. For the underlying discipline see GHG accounting software and the GHG inventory checklist. If a US statutory deadline is your real trigger, SB 253 reporting software covers California. The hardest module has its own page: Scope 3 emissions reporting, backed by the 15 Scope 3 categories reference.