CDP score: what a good CDP score is, how CDP scoring works, and how to improve yours

Last updated August 2026. Most explanations of CDP scoring stop at "A is good, D is bad." That is not enough to act on, because the letter you get is decided by three separate mechanisms working together: a percentage score inside each level, a threshold you must clear to be considered for the level above, and a set of essential criteria that disqualify you from a level regardless of your percentage. Miss any one and you sit a level lower than your work deserves. This page covers what the grade means, who can see it, and where the points actually are. If you are assembling the emissions numbers behind the response, that is what our carbon accounting software is built for.

A good CDP score is generally a B or above. A B means CDP found evidence of action and management processes, not just disclosure. An A or A- puts you in leadership, which is where most large customers and investors set their expectation. In 2025, 899 companies made the Corporate A List out of nearly 20,000 scored, so an A is roughly the top 5%. What separates an A- from an A is a fixed checklist, set out on CDP A List criteria.

The more useful benchmark is relative rather than absolute. CDP releases sector and regional averages alongside your score, and a B in a heavy-emitting sector where the average is C- is a stronger commercial position than a B in a sector where everyone scores B. If a customer set the target, ask them what they actually require: most supplier programs ask for disclosure and improvement over time rather than a specific letter.

CDP scores four sequential levels, and the letter tells you which level you reached. The levels are cumulative: you cannot be graded on Management until you have cleared Awareness, so a company with an excellent transition plan and an incomplete inventory scores on the inventory.

That last pair causes more confusion than anything else in CDP scoring. There is no F on the corporate score. A non-responder is marked "did not disclose", and a late responder is marked "not scored", which are different states with different consequences: one says you were asked and declined, the other says you did the work and missed the cutoff.

Within each level, your percentage decides which of the two letters you get. CDP publishes these thresholds as provisional and reviews them during the scoring period so the distribution stays representative, which means the exact numbers below can move before scores are released. The bands below are the ones CDP applied to the scores released for the 2025 cycle, and they are identical across climate change, forests and water security.

Read the table as a ladder, not a scale. Scoring 78% at Disclosure gives you a D and nothing more unless you also clear the threshold into Awareness. This is deliberate: CDP says isolated areas of excellence with poor performance elsewhere are disincentivized by the design. The arithmetic behind it, including how points are allocated per question, is worked through in the CDP scoring methodology for 2026.

CDP calculates a percentage for each of the four levels, then applies the thresholds above. Disclosure and Awareness use a simple percentage of points awarded out of points available. Management and Leadership use a weighted percentage, because CDP applies sector-specific category weightings at those two levels only.

That weighting detail is the one most companies miss when they try to predict a score. At Disclosure and Awareness every point is worth the same, so completeness is the whole game. At Management and Leadership, questions are grouped into scoring categories and each category carries a weight reflecting its importance for your sector, so the same answer is worth more to a manufacturer than to a software company. You are also scored only on your primary questionnaire sector, even though CDP may allocate you up to four.

The essential criteria are the trap. Each one carries an identifier such as EC-CC1, and they are tagged against specific questions in the questionnaire itself, so you can find them before you submit rather than after. Passing the percentage threshold for Leadership and failing one Leadership essential criterion leaves you at Management, and the score report will not read as though anything went wrong. There are 32 for climate change in 2026, weighted heavily towards Leadership and the A List, and each one is listed with its level on CDP essential criteria.

This depends entirely on who asked you to disclose, and it is worth settling before you decide how much effort to spend. Being requested by investors makes your score public whatever it is. Being requested by a customer keeps it private unless you earn an A.

For a supplier answering a customer request, that middle row is the whole risk calculation: a weak first-year score is not published, so the downside of disclosing badly is much smaller than most teams assume. The upside is asymmetric too, because an A becomes public and quotable. What a customer request involves in practice, including the separate assessment your customer is scored on, is covered in the CDP supply chain questionnaire.

Up to three, not one. CDP scores climate change, forests and water security separately, and you receive a letter for each issue you disclosed on. Disclosing on biodiversity, ocean and plastics is unscored in 2026, so those modules cost you response time without moving a grade. A company scoring A on all three scored issues earns Triple A status: 27 companies achieved it in 2025.

Two 2026 changes are worth noting if you are in scope. Financial services organizations will receive public forests and water security scores for the first time, unless they are otherwise eligible for a private score. And SMEs answering the SME questionnaire can now earn an A for climate change, which was not previously available at any quality of response. Which questionnaire you are shown, and why, is set out on the CDP questionnaire page.

2026 scores are released to disclosers through the CDP portal in the week of November 30, 2026, with the public release and the A Lists following later that same week. Your initial release includes the overall letter, a breakdown by scoring category, and sector and regional averages to compare against. The full set of dates for the cycle, and what to do while you wait, is on when CDP scores are released.

Improvement follows the structure of the scoring rather than general ambition. The single highest-return action for most companies is not a new climate initiative, it is answering questions that were left blank, because an unanswered question scores zero and blanks cluster in the quantitative modules where the weighting is heaviest.

The work behind items three to six is inventory work, and it is where response timelines break. Our approach starts from records you already have, classifying accounts payable and utility data into a scope-by-scope inventory with each figure tied back to the invoice that produced it, which is also what a verifier samples. That is the same ground covered on CDP reporting software.

You are marked "not scored". The response is still visible to the requesters who asked for it, but no letter is calculated, which means it cannot satisfy a customer program that asks for a score. The 2026 scoring deadline is September 16, 2026 at 23:59 International Date Line West.

There is one route out, and it is not widely known. CDP offers On-Demand Extensions to a very limited number of organizations in 2026, for a fee, moving your deadline to September 30, 2026. The request has to come from your organization's Disclosure Submission Lead, not a consultant or third party, and it must be made by September 29 at the latest. The fee is US$2,500 for North America and Latin America excluding Brazil, £2,000 in the UK, and €2,300 across Europe including Türkiye. Slots are limited and granted at CDP's discretion, and once granted the fee is non-refundable even if you end up submitting on time. The rest of the calendar is on the CDP reporting deadline for 2026.

Yes. If you believe an error was made, you can submit an appeal form and CDP's oversight team reviews it independently of the original scorer. An appeal can trigger a full re-review of your response rather than only the point you raised, so a score can move in either direction. Appeal results are final. Scoring itself is carried out partly by trained external scoring partners under CDP quality assurance, with conflict-of-interest declarations required and any conflicted organization moved back to CDP's internal team.