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Glossary
Carbon and ESG reporting

What is CDP Climate?

Definition

CDP Climate is the climate change part of CDP's environmental disclosure system, through which companies report emissions, energy, targets and climate risks to the investors and buyers who request it, and are scored.

Who is asked to disclose

Requests come from capital markets signatories and from large purchasing organizations running supply chain programs, and companies can also respond without a request. A hospital group, manufacturer or property company is usually asked because it sits in a listed customer's supply chain or investor portfolio.

Questionnaire, scoring and the 2026 cycle

Per CDP, its full corporate questionnaire replaced the separate climate change, forests and water security questionnaires in 2024, and forests and water questions appear based on requests, sector or opt-in. Responses are scored on four levels: Disclosure (D minus or D), Awareness (C minus or C), Management (B minus or B) and Leadership (A minus or A). The final response deadline for the 2026 cycle is 28 October 2026, and in 2026 SMEs can earn an SME A score for climate change.

Measured results for reduction initiatives

CDP asks for each emissions reduction initiative with its estimated savings. Aqueduct can replace the estimate with a measured result: consumption against a weather-normalized baseline at the line, device or site where the change was made, converted to money through rate configuration. aQ WaterGuard exports cover the water questions from the same site hierarchy.

Questions

CDP Climate: common questions

CDP Climate is the climate section of the questionnaire run by CDP, a global non-profit disclosure system. Companies answer questions on governance, risks, emissions, energy and targets, and CDP scores the response for the requesting investors and customers. Aqueduct's view is on the CDP climate and water page.

It is shown as did not disclose to the signatories who requested the response, and in CDP's scoring that appears as a failure to disclose. For a supplier, that record can count against it in a buyer's sustainability scorecard.

CDP states that its corporate questionnaire is strongly aligned with both, so data prepared for one can largely be reused for the others. The emissions inventory, energy totals and targets are the shared core, as covered under TCFD and ISSB S2.

Once a year, in CDP's annual disclosure cycle, covering the most recent reporting year. Because the request repeats, companies that keep monthly metered energy by site through the year spend far less time assembling the response than those that rebuild it from invoices.

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