Five lessons from CDP 2026 (and why the shorter 2027 cycle raises the stakes)

Written by: Cameron Wilson, Solutions Manager – Reporting | Last updated: 29.09.2026

The 2026 CDP scoring deadline has passed, and for many response teams that will be a welcome milestone. Preparing a CDP disclosure is a significant undertaking, often involving months of data gathering, technical analysis, stakeholder engagement, review and approval across different parts of the organisation.

Having supported clients through the 2026 cycle, we saw first-hand the amount of work that sits behind a submission, as well as some recurring challenges that made the process harder than it needed to be.

With the cycle now complete, it is a useful time to reflect on what worked well, where teams encountered difficulties and what could make things easier next time. That reflection matters more than usual this year. The 2027 response window opens on 14 April and the scoring deadline falls on 23 June, 85 days earlier than in 2026. For organisations whose financial year ends on 31 March, as is common in the UK, the runway between year-end and submission becomes very short indeed.

Here are five of our main takeaways from CDP 2026.

1. The data often takes longer than the questionnaire

It happened again this year. Completing the questionnaire itself was rarely the biggest challenge; the real work sat in finding the right information, at the right level of detail, and in the format CDP expects. Every year teams hope this part gets easier, and every year it proves to be the bigger task. The same pressure points appeared again and again, remarkably consistent from client to client.

In the climate module, the recurring difficulty was attribution. Question 7.10.1 asks organisations to explain why gross global emissions changed year on year and to quantify each driver, whether that is renewable energy, efficiency measures, changes in output or methodology. Many teams knew their totals had moved but struggled to evidence why, or found the individual drivers did not add up to the overall change. Energy reporting caused similar friction. Question 7.30.1 requires consumption totals in MWh, excluding feedstocks, at a level of granularity that invoices and internal trackers often do not provide.

The water security module told a similar story. The most common gap was the water risk assessment itself. A quick win here, and easy points in the module: the WRI Aqueduct tool referenced in question 9.3.1 can identify basin-level exposure at no cost. For companies requested to respond on forests, the challenge ran deeper. Breaking down commodity volumes by origin is genuinely difficult when products are bought through a centralised supplier or broker, and many organisations found they did not hold sourcing locations at all.
The lesson for next time is simple. Identify the difficult datasets now and give the owning teams the rest of the year to close the gaps.

2. CDP’s time-saving tools help, but they still need review

CDP has invested in features designed to speed up submission, and in 2026 many of them matured. Pre-populated fields using previous responses and improved data reuse all cut down on manual re-entry.

Used well, these tools are a genuine time saver but these still need the same scrutiny as anything written from scratch. Figures must reflect current data, narratives must describe the business as it is today, not last year, and every inherited answer should be checked against the latest questionnaire requirements. Particular care is needed where an old answer implies progress that the latest evidence no longer supports.

CDP responses are also highly connected. The same information can appear across different questions, tables and environmental topics, so a change in one place may ripple through several others.
Treat these tools as a head start rather than a finished response. Accept what is still accurate, then spend the time saved on new requirements, changed data and the questions that call for real technical judgement.

3. Consolidating data sooner is no longer optional

The biggest single source of rework in 2026 was drafting against numbers that were still moving. Where carbon footprints, Scope 3 classifications or methodology decisions were finalised late, whole sections of the response had to be revisited, sometimes more than once.

The delays were partly technical, with methodology decisions still open late in the process, and partly organisational. The inputs to a CDP response sit across finance, procurement, operations, risk and sustainability teams, and bringing them together is a project in its own right.
The earlier 2027 timetable turns this from an inconvenience into a real constraint. Data collection, internal review, assurance and sign-off that previously happened over the summer will need to be ready in the first half of the year, for many organisations alongside year-end reporting.

Consolidating final figures, methodologies and supporting explanations before detailed drafting begins is the single change most likely to protect quality under the compressed timetable.

4. Easy fixes are costing anagement and Leadership points

Another lesson from 2026 was the value of looking beyond whether each question had simply been answered.

CDP scores responses at four levels: Disclosure, Awareness, Management and Leadership. Together these determine the final band, from D- up to A. Most established responders secure the first two levels by answering fully. The bands separate at Management and Leadership, where points depend on the quality and completeness of the evidence behind each answer.

Scores for 2026 will not be published for some months, but reviewing submissions against CDP’s published scoring methodology, we could already see where points will be dropped. The avoidable errors concentrate exactly where the stakes are highest: fields left blank, figures that do not reconcile across questions, evidence referenced but never attached, essential criteria overlooked.

A structured review against the methodology catches these cheap losses. It can also surface the more substantive gaps, where the issue is not how an answer has been written but whether the underlying evidence, process or action exists at all.

Both kinds of finding are worth carrying into the next cycle.

5. Some of the hardest questions are governance questions

Not every challenging question in 2026 could be solved by finding another dataset.

Teams also had to make decisions about reporting boundaries, information that had not yet been published elsewhere, differences between group and subsidiary reporting, and the level of approval needed before particular information could be disclosed.
These issues became more noticeable where CDP timelines did not line up neatly with annual reporting or other corporate disclosure processes.

Bringing these conversations forward can make the next cycle easier. Agreeing reporting boundaries, ownership and approval routes earlier can reduce the need for late decisions and repeated reviews.

Looking ahead to CDP 2027

There is no need for response teams to move straight from one CDP cycle into the next. Take some time to reflect on this cycle and what teams can achieve moving forward. However, it is worth capturing the lessons from 2026 while they are still fresh.

The earlier 2027 timetable makes that even more valuable. With the response window opening on 14 April and scoring closing on 23 June, decisions that felt early this year will sit on the critical path next year.

A short review now can help teams identify what took the most time this year, where information was difficult to obtain and which decisions could have been made earlier.

That does not need to mean creating a large new programme of work. In many cases, a few targeted changes can make a noticeable difference when the next cycle begins.

Making the next cycle easier

Completing CDP is a substantial piece of work, and reaching the end of the 2026 cycle is an achievement in itself.

The useful question now is where the process could work better next time. Better access to data, clearer ownership, earlier technical decisions and more focused review can all help reduce the effort involved while improving the quality of the response. The simplest lever of all is starting earlier. With the 2027 window opening on 14 April, there is a concrete date to plan backwards from, so capture these lessons now, before attention moves on to other priorities.

Simply Sustainable supports organisations across the full CDP cycle, and this is the point in the year where that support pays off most. Our scoring gap analysis breaks the CDP methodology down question by question, showing where a submission is likely to be exposed before results are published. Once scores are released, we can pinpoint exactly where points were lost and what it would take to move up a band in 2027. If you would like a post-cycle review or a head start on CDP 2027, get in touch with our team.