Researchers at Kyushu University found that companies' climate disclosure efforts improved far more than average scores suggest. Associate professor Alexander Ryota Keeley and his team analyzed 10 years of CDP climate scores covering 8,959 companies between 2016 and 2025. The results appeared in Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management on Oct. 14, 2026.
The overall mean CDP score rose by 0.42 points, from 5.04 to 5.46. However, the 1,470 companies assessed in both 2016 and 2025 gained 1.12 points, with their mean score increasing from 5.24 to 6.36. This represents nearly three times the overall increase.
The discrepancy occurs because the pool of companies changed. New companies entering the CDP assessment in 2025 scored below the long-term participants, reducing the overall average by 0.90 points. Companies that stopped reporting by 2025 had scored below the stayers in 2016, adding 0.20 points to the overall change. Together, these compositional shifts masked 0.70 points of improvement among consistent reporters.
Keeley notes that "average scores give us a broad picture of reporting trends, the companies being assessed change over time, which can mask progress within individual companies."
The team also analyzed the text of companies' written responses to CDP questions in 2024 and 2025. Using measures such as response length and numerical density, they created a Textual Detail Index and found that more detailed answers correlated with higher scores.
Keeley recommends that investors look beyond overall averages to examine companies' governance and long-term commitments to assess where progress is occurring.