In 2024, CDP introduced an extra layer of essential criteria for climate change scoring across different levels. These criteria must be met for organisations responding to the full corporate questionnaire on climate change to progress their score to the next level, ensuring organisations disclose critical data points necessary for understanding environmental impact..
CDP’s Climate Change Scoring Essential Criteria 2024 document aims to outline the essential criteria across levels below and including the A list, reflecting the order of topics that arise in the 2024 Full Corporate Questionnaire.
For each essential criteria topic,CDP outlines the following:
Essential criteria level: Essential criteria will be applied at Awareness, Management, Leadership or A list levels. Not all topics will have criteria applied to all levels. If a criterion is applied to Awareness level and the check is not met, this will limit an organisation’s final score to a D. Similarly, if the Awareness criteria are met and the Management level is not met, the final score will be limited to a C. The visuals below illustrate the essential criteria for A list.
Question: Each essential criterion will be linked to a question or multiple questions from the 2024 Full Corporate Questionnaire.
Scored data points: The essential criteria have been broken down into their individual components based on key data points that they assess. In this column, each criterion is outlined in detail. Organizations must meet all criteria within a level to meet the overall essential criteria check, unless stated otherwise.