On 20th January, the Climate Change results for the CDP were released.
We’re hugely inspired by our clients for raising their climate ambitions and pushing for improved environmental performance and transparency.
100% of our clients achieving A and B scores, compared to only 60% of total respondents.
Improving or maintaining a CDP score is no easy feat considering the significant changes to the questionnaire in recent years and requires a lot of dedication from in-house sustainability teams working alongside our team of experts.
Further to this success 33% of our clients achieved Leadership in their CDP scores, many scoring far above their industry peers. This achievement demonstrated their greater consideration towards climate risk along with their pathways towards creating more sustainable businesses and working towards a low carbon future.
Why is CDP important?
CDP provides a robust platform for disclosing the climate risks of a company and presents the information clearly and efficiently to the company as well as its relevant stakeholders and peers. The pressure for organisations to accurately measure and manage climate risks continues to grow year on year. Investors increasingly factor climate risk into their investment strategy so businesses must be prepared to provide this insight as a minimum. Businesses should then prepared to demonstrate action to address climate risks in order to remain competitive.
The insight gleaned from a CDP response can also assist in refining existing targets. Developing data driven targets help firms to set ambitious yet achievable goals and build a roadmap to achieving them that is aligned with best practice.
What is changing in 2020?
In 2020, the industry will see changes in CDP reporting. These changes include the introduction of a new questionnaire for the Financial Services (FS) sector, the Real Estate sector, the Construction sector and the Capital Goods sector. These proposed changes are to complete CDPs alignment with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) sectors in 2020. 14 new questions will be presented to companies with activities within the real estate and construction sectors and 9 new questions are to be presented to companies with activities within the capital goods sector.
The new Financial Services questionnaire includes a new module on Portfolio Impact which examines emissions from investments and alignment to a well below 2-degree world. There have also been several questions removed from the questionnaire, including the requirement to breakdown emissions from own operations showing the shift from an internal to an external focus.
The key dates for the 2020 CDP reporting are as follows:
January 2020 – 2019 CDP scores are released
February 2020 – Official disclosure requests are circulated to companies
March 2020 – Final guidance and scoring methodologies released
April 2020 – Online response system opens
July 2020 – Responses to be submitted by 31st July
As investors put increasing pressure on companies to disclose their climate risks, it is becoming more important for these benchmarking tools to be used in order for scores to improve. This year Carbon Intelligence helped 95% of clients either maintain or improve their CDP scores. Contact us if you would like to know more about CDP, and understand how your firm can improve its score through a simple CDP Gap Analysis.
Contact Us
Please email [email protected] for more information or to have a chat with one of our experts.