CDP 2017 Climate Change - First Impressions and New Trends

CDP responding companies have now received their scores and feedback for their 2017 submission. Here are our first reflections on this year’s performance.

CDP has significantly raised the bar in 2017 compared to 2016. Last year, with a newly introduced scoring methodology, was largely a ‘trial’ year for CDP and responding companies alike. After gauging the impact of the change in methodology on the scores, this year, CDP has adjusted the threshold percentages required to ‘progress’ through the four scoring bands and has made things significantly more difficult for responding companies.

This has had a visible impact on the scores this year: globally, only 112 companies made it into the A list this year, compared to 193 in 2016.

It’s important to note that the ‘Leadership’ points required to get into the A-list are generally assigned based on more specific actions such as setting Science Based Targets approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative. Encouraging respondents to take specific actions is only one of the clear trends CDP is moving toward, together with a new sector-based approached that will be introduced next year and a long-term plan to unify the three programs – climate, water and forest – into one single questionnaire.

It will be interesting to see how these changes will affect the scores in the future, but one thing is certain, getting a good score is not going to get any easier for respondents and expectations of companies in a leadership position will only get higher.

Vittoria Caselgrandi