CDP 2025: What the scores reveal about the industrialization of ESG data
The CDP has published the results of its 2025 reporting cycle. With more than 22,000 participating companies, the initiative confirms its central role in the environmental transparency of organizations. But beyond the scores themselves, a close reading of these results reveals a deeper transformation: ESG is becoming a global data infrastructure. This evolution poses a structuring question for companies: how to produce, structure and govern this data with the level of requirements that investors, regulators and economic partners now expect?
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CDP, which has become a global environmental data infrastructure
Created to encourage climate transparency, the CDP has actually established itself as a global reference for the publication of environmental data.
The Organization Has Just Published Its Figures for 2025:
- 22,000 businesses Answered the questionnaire
- 640 investors, representing 127 trillion dollars in assets, requested data via the platform
- More Than 270 large companies They Asked for About 45,000 suppliers As part of the Supply Chain Program
These figures illustrate the fact that CDP does not last longer functions only as a reporting exercise. The environmental data collected is used by various actors in the economy: investors, large companies, supply chains. They inform risk analysis, investment decisions, and responsible purchasing policies.
The CDP therefore operates today as A point of circulation of environmental data in the economic ecosystem.
Increasingly Systemic Environmental Issues
Another significant evolution concerns the scope of the themes dealt with. Historically focused on climate, the CDP now covers several environmental dimensions:
- Climate
- Water
- Forests
- Biodiversity
In 2025, the number of businesses obtaining a Triple A (the maximum score on climate, water and forests) has almost tripled, from 8 to 23 organizations.
For 2026, the CDP also plans to introduce a Module dedicated to the oceans, available on a voluntary basis.
This evolution illustrates profound change in the way businesses approach environmental issues.
Sustainability is no longer treated by silos. She Becomes A system of ecological and economic interdependencies Which requires a more global vision.
Data is becoming the condition for credibility
This transformation is accompanied by a significant change in market expectations.
Investors, banks, customers and regulators now expect companies to:
- Measurable data
- Explicit methodologies
- Indicators that are comparable over time
In this context, CDP scores play an important role. They make it possible to assess the maturity of organizations in their ability to produce structured environmental information.
The increase in the number of businesses getting an A grade (of 2% in 2024 to 4% in 2025) probably reflects two simultaneous phenomena:
- An increase in the competence of companies on these subjects
- Gradual improvement of ESG data collection and management systems
Behind the improvement in scores is often hidden A transformation of internal information systems.
Interoperability is becoming a central issue
Another Major Evolution: The reconciliation between the frames of reference. The CDP is now strengthening its alignment with several international frameworks, including:
- Tea TNFD For Risks Related to Nature
- Tea GRI
- Tea GHG Protocol
This convergence is positive. It aims to improve the comparability of data and to limit the fragmentation of reporting frameworks. But it also reveals a growing challenge for businesses.
Because in practice, they often have to meet several requirements simultaneously:
- Investor quizzes
- Requests from customers or principals
- Regulations like the CSRD
- Voluntary standards such as CDP or GRI
Each framework mobilizes specific indicators, distinct methodologies, and different reporting cycles. In this context, it is a question of avoiding the multiplication of data silos and of industrializing what can be industrialized as much as possible.
Structuring extra-financial data
For a long time, the main challenge of ESG reporting was to produce information. Today, the nature of the challenge has changed.
Businesses must now be able to:
- Structure their extra-financial data
- Ensure Their Traceability
- Make them auditable
- Sharing Them with Different Actors
This evolution is constantly bringing the management of ESG data closer to that of financial data. In finance, businesses have long relied on structured information systems to ensure the consistency, reliability, and comparability of data.
The same logic is emerging for the extra-financial sector.
Towards an extra-financial data infrastructure
Initiatives like the CDP have played a key role in encouraging environmental transparency. They contributed to structuring the first standards and to raising market awareness. But as requirements increase, the burden on businesses becomes difficult to manage.
Businesses need an infrastructure that can:
- Centralize ESG data
- Ensure Their Consistency
- Reuse Them in Different Repositories
- Facilitate their sharing with all their stakeholders
In this environment, producing data is no longer enough. You have to be able to structure, govern and operate it in several contexts.
ESG enters a new phase
The 2025 CDP results illustrate a wider trend. ESG is no longer just a reporting or communication topic. It Continuing Becomes A structuring layer of the economic system.
As the expectations of investors and regulators increase, the quality of environmental data is becoming a key factor:
- To access financing
- To secure supply chains
- To demonstrate the robustness of businesses in the face of ecological transitions
In this context, successful organizations will be those capable of processing extra-financial data with the same level of requirements as financial data. Because in the emerging sustainable economy, Credibility is now based on data.