As the ESG regulatory environment splinters—from softened enforcement of the CSRD in Europe to narrowed climate rules in the U.S.—sustainability leaders are left navigating uncertainty, complexity, and a growing list of disclosure obligations. For many teams, the once-clear path to compliance now feels more like a moving target.
And yet, ESG work hasn’t slowed. If anything, it’s become harder to prioritize.
So where do you actually focus when the rules keep shifting and your team is already stretched thin?
From where I’m sitting—building AI tools for ESG disclosures every day—CDP is quietly becoming the most sensible answer.
Not because it’s perfect. But because it’s stable, trusted, and increasingly aligned with the global direction of travel.
CDP has long served as a lighthouse in the ESG disclosure space — not just as a voluntary framework, but as a signaling mechanism for how the market expects companies to engage with environmental risk. Its influence cuts across sectors and geographies, and over the past two decades, it’s become one of the most trusted platforms for credible, comparable climate data.
In 2024, a record 22,700 companies were scored by CDP. It’s a sign that despite complexity, companies are still leaning into CDP — not as a checkbox exercise, but as a way to build trust with investors, regulators, and their own value chains.
Looking ahead to 2025, CDP’s role may be more pivotal than ever. Here’s why CDP remains a smart investment of time and resources:
CDP’s 2025 update isn’t a big transformation — and that’s by design.
After a major overhaul in 2024, CDP has chosen stability for this year. The questionnaire structure, scoring framework, and core datapoints all remain largely consistent, with only minor tweaks to improve clarity, fix logic bugs, and streamline some drop-downs and definitions.
It’s not a reinvention—but it is a usability upgrade, especially for teams juggling multiple standards.
But let’s be real, it’s still way too hard to complete:
That said, CDP has openly acknowledged these challenges—and is actively working to reduce the reporting burden. From our perspective, that’s an encouraging signal. The questionnaire is evolving in the right direction. And the team behind it is listening.
At Briink, we’ve seen firsthand that the real bottleneck in ESG isn’t choosing the right framework—it’s executing disclosures efficiently and credibly. Most teams still rely on:
That’s not scalable. And it’s certainly not assurance-ready.
We’ve built tools to help ESG teams:
Our goal isn’t to simplify CDP’s standards—it’s to simplify the experience of meeting them.
The European Commission’s Omnibus proposal has created a moment of pause. With potential delays to sector-specific ESRS requirements and softened rules for non-EU parents, many companies are unsure how to proceed.
But this ambiguity is also an opportunity. Leading sustainability teams are using this time to:
CDP isn’t easy. It’s not always intuitive, and it’s certainly not effortless to complete. Even with recent improvements, the questionnaire remains complex and time-consuming, especially for teams managing multiple frameworks. It’s understandable that many feel overwhelmed.
But here’s the reality: CDP is one of the only ESG frameworks you can actually build around.
It’s globally recognized, aligned with emerging regulatory standards, and stable enough to be a strategic constant as everything else shifts. For many, it’s become the default not because it’s simple — but because it’s dependable.
If you're struggling to keep up, you’re not alone. Most teams are still using fragmented, manual processes that simply don’t scale. The good news is: you don’t have to brute-force your way through it anymore.
At Briink, we’re betting on CDP. And we’re building the tools to make it easier for your team to do the same — faster, smarter, and with a lot less stress.
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