CDP’s Activity Classification System (CDP-ACS) was developed to allocate sector-specific questions to companies from 2018. The CDP-ACS framework categorizes companies by focusing on the activities from which they derive revenue and associating these with the impacts across a company’s value chain from climate change, water security and deforestation.
The CDP Activities are mapped to the questionnaires. A company must earn at least 20% of its revenue in an Activity to be mapped to the relevant sector questionnaire. If no sector questionnaire exists, the company will only be required to respond to the general questions for that theme.
CDP-ACS is a three-tiered system comprised of (from bottom-up) Activity, Activity Group and Industry. See the full list of CDP-ACS. The sector-based approach allows CDP to make more meaningful assessments of companies' responses, incorporating each sector's characteristics and nuances, resulting in a score that reflects the company's progress in environmental stewardship and enabling better benchmarking against other companies.
Note that companies will only be scored on their primary questionnaire sector. This means that if more than one set of sector questions applies to a company, not all questions will be scored. Sector specific questions are labelled to indicate which sector(s) they apply to. However, we encourage companies to respond to all questions that apply to them.
If you need to amend your ACS category, please contact us via My Support in the Help Center.
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