This article is for disclosing companies and offers guidance on how to set and/or change your company’s selected activities and sectors according to CDP’s Activity Classification System (CDP-ACS). Starting from the 2025 cycle, all disclosing companies are able to change their CDP-ACS directly through the Portal.
Contents
CDP-ACS is CDP’s own Activity Classification System designed to allocate sector-specific questions that companies will receive in their questionnaires. This system categorizes organizations by focusing on the activities from which they derive revenue and associating these with the effects to their organization regarding climate change, deforestation, and water security.
As a result, this approach ensures a better understanding of company actions according to their environmental dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities and is essential for better comparability of data.
It is a three-tiered system comprised of (from the bottom-up):
- CDP Activity
- CDP Activity Group
- CDP Industry
The full list of CDP’s Activity Classification System, the questionnaire allocation, examples and a detailed breakdown of the sectors and activities can be found on our guidance document.
CDP-ACS allocations
As part of the disclosure process, a subset of companies is allocated CDP activities that are most relevant to their operations, based on the revenue proportions of their operating activities. The activity with the highest revenue percentage is assigned as the primary activity, with the others designated as additional activities.
Questionnaire sectors are determined using the same revenue percentages. Sectors contributing at least 20% of a company’s total revenue are allocated, with the highest percentage sector assigned as the primary, and the others as additional sectors.
Only the primary questionnaire sector will be scored. If multiple sector questions apply, not all questions will contribute to scoring. Sector-specific questions are clearly labelled to indicate which sector(s) they apply to.
If you believe your company has been allocated the CDP-ACS incorrectly, or if your company has not been allocated CDP-ACS, please refer to the process below to make the changes in the Portal.
CDP-ACS setup and change process
One of the topics presented in the ‘Set up questionnaire’ onboarding step is setting your organization’s ‘Activity Classification’. If you have not yet completed your onboarding journey then you will be able to click the ‘Set up questionnaire’ link on the onboarding tile and navigate to the ‘Set up your CDP questionnaire’ overview page. Here, click the red ‘Start questionnaire setup’ button at the bottom and answer the series of questions that follow including setting your CDP-ACS classification.
Note: Discloser Contributors can go through the questionnaire setup process, but only the Submission Lead is able to submit the setup.
If you have already completed your onboarding and started your response but need to change your CDP-ACS classification you will need to navigate to your Portal homepage and click the ‘Edit questionnaire setup’ button underneath your questionnaire KPI tile. This will take you to the ‘Set up your CDP questionnaire’ overview page, where you will be able to re-answer the series of questions including the section on your CDP-ACS classification.
Note: When you re-submit your pre-questionnaire set up, no data will be lost. You will, however, see changes in additional questions. Please note that only the user with the Submission Lead role will be able to re-submit the questionnaire setup.
Once you have completed the setup make sure to submit your answers. The CDP-ACS classification will then be visible in your ‘Organization details’ page accessible using the ‘Show organization details’ link at the top of your Portal homepage.
Note: you will only be able to change your CDP-ACS during the disclosure cycle. You will not be able to change the classification before or after the cycle, nor after submission.
In the ‘Activity classification’ section of the questionnaire setup, you are requested to complete your organization’s business activities according to CDP-ACS:
- CDP Industry
- CDP Activity Group
- CDP Activity
- % annual revenue associated with activity
Question preview: What were your organization’s business activities according to CDP-ACS?
Important: before completing these fields, consult the CDP-ACS table and descriptions to ensure that you are selecting the most appropriate activities for your organization in the reporting year.
The column ‘Questionnaire sector’ is auto populated and indicates which questionnaire sector each of your activities is associated with.
CDP may already have some of your ACS information on file, in which case this data will be prepopulated in this table.
Example:
This company is involved in six activities, ‘Logistics – transport’, ‘Industrial machinery’, ‘Engines & motors’, ‘Other renewable energy equipment’, ‘Alternative vehicles’ and ‘Specialty chemicals’. ‘Logistics - transport’ is the activity with the highest percentage so this is assigned as the primary activity.
Summing the revenue percentages by the associated questionnaire sectors results in 41% being allocated to the ‘Capital goods’ questionnaire sector, 28.5% being allocated to ‘Transport OEMS - EPM’, 27.5% being allocated to ‘Transport services’ and 3% being allocated to ‘Chemicals’. Therefore, ‘Capital goods’ is assigned as the primary questionnaire sector, ‘Transport OEMS - EPM’ and ‘Transport services’ are assigned as additional questionnaire sectors and ‘General’ is not allocated as the 20% threshold for questionnaire sector allocation has not been met.
Important: It is your responsibility to ensure the activities associated with your organization are accurate. CDP may request additional information following any changes to your CDP-ACS. If the selected CDP-ACS classification does not align with your revenue, and if your company is unable to provide adequate justification for your selected ACS, CDP reserves the right not to score your submission nor share your data with your Requesters.
CDP-ACS and environmental issue assignment
Your selected activities may affect the environmental issues that you are assigned. In accordance with CDP’s Industry Impact Classification, each CDP activity is assigned a Forests impact and a Water impact. If your organization has at least one activity classified as “Critical” or “Very High” for a given environmental theme, your organization will be assigned this environmental issue. If your organization has at least one activity classified as “High” or “Medium”, whether you are assigned an environmental issue will depend on the revenue associated with this activity.
For more information and a full breakdown of the impact classification for each activity, please check CDP’s Industry Impact Classification. For more information on how each environmental issue will be scored, please see our knowledge article on understanding your requests and understanding score privacy.
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