Quick Comparison
| SASB | CDP | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Industry-specific financially material ESG topics | Environmental — climate, water, forests |
| Applicability | Publicly listed companies across 77 industries | Companies requested by investors or supply chain customers |
| Required/Voluntary | Voluntary | Voluntary (investor/customer-driven) |
| Geography | Global (originally U.S.-focused) | Global |
| Key Focus | Industry-specific financial materiality metrics | Environmental disclosure, scoring, and benchmarking |
| Assurance | Encouraged | Verification encouraged; rewarded in scoring |
What is SASB?
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board developed 77 industry-specific standards identifying the ESG topics and associated metrics most likely to be financially material for companies in each industry. Now maintained by the ISSB under the IFRS Foundation, SASB Standards provide prescriptive, quantitative metrics that enable direct comparison between companies within the same industry.
SASB covers five broad dimensions — environment, social capital, human capital, business model and innovation, and leadership and governance — but applies them selectively. Each industry standard identifies only the topics financially material to that industry, resulting in focused, investor-relevant disclosures. A typical SASB standard addresses 5-15 topics with specific metrics, units, and calculation guidance.
What is CDP?
CDP operates the world's largest environmental disclosure platform, collecting data from over 23,000 companies annually through structured questionnaires on climate change, water security, and forests. The system is demand-driven — investors and supply chain purchasers request disclosure — and companies receive public letter-grade scores benchmarking their environmental performance and disclosure quality.
CDP questionnaires are aligned with the TCFD framework (for climate) and increasingly with ISSB and ESRS requirements. The scoring system creates competitive incentives: A-list recognition drives corporate engagement, while F scores for non-response create reputational pressure.
Key Differences
1. Standards vs Platform
SASB provides standards — definitions, metrics, and measurement methodologies that companies apply in their own reporting. CDP provides a platform — a structured questionnaire that companies complete, which CDP then scores, analyzes, and publishes. SASB tells you what to measure; CDP asks you questions and grades your answers.
2. Topical Scope
SASB covers the full range of financially material ESG topics per industry — including social capital, human capital, and governance alongside environmental issues. CDP focuses exclusively on environmental themes: climate change, water security, and forests. A company using SASB addresses workforce issues, data privacy, and business ethics where financially material; CDP does not cover these areas.
3. Industry Specificity
SASB's 77 industry standards are its defining feature — the metrics for a technology company differ substantially from those for a food retailer. CDP uses a largely uniform questionnaire structure across sectors, with some sector-specific questions. SASB's industry lens makes cross-sector comparison difficult but within-sector comparison precise; CDP's more uniform approach enables cross-sector environmental benchmarking.
4. Scoring and Benchmarking
CDP scores companies publicly, creating a market-based accountability mechanism. SASB has no scoring system — companies disclose metrics and stakeholders draw their own conclusions. CDP's scores are used by investors, ESG raters, and media as a shorthand for environmental performance. SASB disclosures require more analysis to interpret.
5. Financial vs Environmental Materiality
SASB uses financial materiality — a topic is relevant if it could affect enterprise value. CDP uses a concept closer to environmental significance — the questionnaires cover climate, water, and forests for virtually all companies, with scoring that rewards both disclosure and environmental performance. A SASB standard might exclude water metrics for a software company; CDP's water questionnaire applies regardless.
6. Demand Mechanism
CDP disclosure is typically triggered by external requests from investors or supply chain members. SASB disclosure is self-initiated, driven by the company's own assessment of what to report. This difference in trigger mechanism affects which companies participate and the urgency of response.
Which One Do You Need?
Use SASB if you need comprehensive, industry-specific ESG metrics for investor communication that cover social and governance alongside environmental topics. SASB is the right choice for SEC filings, investor presentations, and ISSB preparation.
Use CDP if investors or supply chain customers have requested environmental disclosure, you want a scored benchmark of environmental performance, or you need an efficient platform for collecting and reporting environmental data.
Use both for the most complete investor-focused disclosure. SASB provides the industry-specific financial materiality context across all ESG dimensions; CDP provides the detailed environmental performance data with public scoring. The environmental data overlaps substantially.
Can You Use Both?
They're complementary, and many companies use both. SASB's environmental metrics for a given industry often correspond to CDP questionnaire content — emissions data, energy management, water withdrawal, and waste metrics appear in both systems. Companies can collect environmental data once and distribute it to both SASB disclosures and CDP responses.
The key difference in how the data is presented: SASB metrics appear in investor-facing reports (annual reports, sustainability reports, SASB indexes) as standalone data points. CDP responses go through CDP's platform, are scored, and are shared with requesting investors and purchasers. The audiences overlap but the delivery mechanisms differ.
Council Fire's Perspective
We find that companies approaching SASB and CDP as separate workstreams end up duplicating data collection efforts and sometimes producing inconsistent numbers. The environmental metrics overlap is significant — emissions, energy, water, waste — and the underlying data should come from the same source of truth.
Our recommended approach is to build a unified environmental data management system and then distribute data to both SASB disclosures and CDP questionnaire responses. For non-environmental topics (workforce metrics, data privacy, governance), SASB stands alone. For environmental benchmarking and investor scoring, CDP stands alone. In the middle is a large area of overlap that should be managed as a single process.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do investors prefer SASB or CDP?
Different investors use different tools. SASB metrics are favored by fundamental analysts integrating ESG into valuation models because of their industry specificity and financial materiality lens. CDP scores are used as screening criteria and engagement triggers — many ESG funds require minimum CDP scores. A comprehensive investor relations strategy addresses both.
Can CDP data fulfill SASB environmental disclosures?
Partially. CDP climate questionnaire responses contain detailed emissions, energy, and climate risk data that maps to SASB environmental metrics for many industries. However, SASB's industry-specific metrics may include environmental dimensions (e.g., ecological impacts, fuel management) that CDP doesn't cover. And SASB's social and governance metrics are entirely outside CDP's scope.
Will ISSB adoption make SASB and CDP redundant?
Not immediately. SASB metrics are being integrated into ISSB as industry-specific guidance, so SASB's content lives on. CDP is positioning itself as a disclosure platform for ISSB compliance, so CDP's role shifts from framework implementer to compliance mechanism. Both evolve rather than disappear.
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