The CDP Network Magicians
Filtering the myriad of initiatives and organizations within the Carbon Disclosure Project's networks
This is part five of an ongoing series on how the CDP has taken advantage of other parties. Part One looked at how the NGO manipulated the investment community, offering trading houses insider information on corporate information while threatening companies into sharing their information with a “disclose or divest” extortionary tactic. The second part examined how the CDP has developed a concept of “transition risk” where companies who do not bow to the activist transition narrative face the risk of being forced out of business as societies shift to “more sustainable alternatives”. Part Three looked at how the CDP has been lobbying government procurement agencies into making their disclosure app mandatory for all federal funding grants. The most recent section followed all of the iterations and shapeshifting the CDP has put its standards through over the last two decades to try to keep their product relevant to the climate business opportunities. This chapter looks at the myriad of initiatives and organizations the NGO has created while the final part will take account of the lucrative funds the CDP earns and questions what it does with them.
The CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) see themselves as networkers, trying to get their “CDPeople” in every room and on every committee. As the last section noted, the CDP managed to enlist a former director into a White House body (the Council on Environmental Quality), and managed to bring an organization it set up onto this same body. Quite a feat as neither of these organizations are American and yet they managed to obtain a certain degree of regulatory authority (without going through an official tender process). This leads to the question: Who is behind this networking/lobbying powerhouse?
The Carbonic Entrepreneur
The CDP was founded by Paul Dickinson, a British communications consultant and carbonic entrepreneur, but with no climate or meteorological background. He still serves as the NGO’s strategic advisor but has branched out into so many other organizations that feeds into (and builds off of) his CDP empire.
Every couple years Dickinson seems to be setting up a new organization or company.
He set up Share Action in 2018 to set standards for how financial institutions should invest by putting climate first, “advise” shareholders of their progress and lobby governments for stricter regulations.
In 2021 he joined Persefoni, a “Climate Management & Accounting Platform” for management, analytics and disclosure.
Last year, Dickinson set up Transition Value Partners to work closely with boards and upper management of large companies on strategy, policy and climate transition.
It doesn’t take much to see how Dickinson would weave all of his lucrative business interests together around his NGO, the CDP, and his private consultancy.
This frenetic networker has also brought the CDP in with other groups to create sister organizations that then work together under the guise of them being independent NGOs (rather than the profit centers that they are). In 2015, the CDP, alongside the UN Global Compact, WRI, WWF and the We Mean Business Coalition, created the Science Based (sic) Targets Initiative (SBTI) to set standards for industry to reach net-zero. The SBTI group was also brought in to work within the US government (without any tender) thanks to the CDP contacts inside the White House.
Just a note on the We Mean Business Coalition (a handful of industry groups leading the drive to net zero). The CDP is a founding partner, and at one point, the CEO of We Mean Business was none other than … Paul Dickinson.
Wait, There’s More
The CDP is also a founding partner of the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, working again with the PRI, a body that developed out of the UN Global Compact (see above how these organizations also joined up to create the Science Based Targets Initiative). As a recent Firebreak article noted, earlier this month, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative had to suspend its operations pending a review to see if they are still “fit for purpose” after the largest asset manager, BlackRock, recently left the initiative.
Another Firebreak article concluded that these CDP-led initiatives never had a chance given how the BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink, torpedoed the net-zero financing game. He just got too excited about the money he’ll make developing large energy infrastructure funds to finance the (fossil-fuel-based) expansion of in-house data center energy generation projects.
One has to wonder why the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative had even been created when another UN agency, UNEP, had already created the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. Many asset managers are also, technically, banks (a nice trick imposed during the Great Recession in 2008). I would imagine that the CDP did not want to be left out on the net-zero commitment game, so they joined up with their partners in the UN Global Compact and the PRI to form their own investor alliance to get in on the global policing action.
Not that it matters much as the Net-Zero Banking Alliance is bleeding members on the daily (the 11 largest American and Canadian banks have withdrawn their NZBA membership in the last two months) and will likely join the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative and “suspend their operations” (for the same reason, because the banks are joining the dash for cash into the AI data center fossil-fuel-based power generation funds).
If your head isn’t spinning enough, the CDP also formed the Investor Agenda, this time coat-tailing on UN credibility from both the PRI and UNEP. The Investor Agenda organization created as Investor Climate Action Plans (ICAPs) Expectations Ladder that “helps investors to navigate the many different initiatives that exist and to create ambitious plans of action”. No kidding! With so many initiatives started up by the CDP, it makes sense that the CDP would then create a product to sell to investors to make sense of them all.
I suppose if these people keep buying their products, then the CDP is almost obliged to separate them from their money in ever more creative methods.
UNEP, UNFCCC, CDP ...
Paul Dickinson claimed to have closely worked in 2014 and 2015 with Christiana Figueres, the then executive secretary of the UNFCCC. In the interview, Dickinson seemed to be taking credit for many of the achievements at the COP21 in Paris in 2015.
The annual COP meetings are where the CDPeople are at their most frenetic, hosting side events, getting their speakers onto panels and rewarding their corporate leaders, first class disclosers, fund managers and foundation supporters with attention and acclamation. While other NGOs (and UN bodies like the WHO) campaign to try ban industry from participating in the annual COP climate festivals, this one NGO uses their network to sell stage-time and reward their highest paying financial industry clients. They also seem to regularly show up at the World Economic Forum’s Davos conferences, but like the COP events, not in the main hall.
The CDP has never earned a place of privilege within the UN climate or environmental bodies. Many UN initiatives have either challenged or at best, ignored, their legitimacy in the carbon disclosure business. Other initiatives have excluded the NGO (like how the Bloomberg-led Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) was accepted widely as the standard, forcing the CDP to align their disclosures to those standards). The TCFD completed its mandate in 2023 and was transferred to the IFRS for future management, and, notably, not the CDP (even though the CDP had realigned their disclosure standards to match those of the TCFD).
Today Dickinson and Christiana Figueres host a weekly podcast called Outrage and Optimism along with another former UN director and business partner, Tom Rivett-Carnac. While the podcast is funded by several climate-focused foundations, engages with high-level guests and has a team managing its slick production, the one thing their podcasts are lacking is a significant audience. I suppose after decades of engaging with (and profiting from) industry, Dickinson has not earned the respect of the climate campaign community.
And therein lies the biggest challenge for these networking magicians. Having a great network and setting up a multitude of initiatives and organizations can create lucrative opportunities as long as paying clients keep coming through your doors. But those doors now seem to be revolving doors as many of the key banks and fund managers that the CDP had relied on for their bread and butter are leaving this myriad of CDP products, finding other opportunities to chase down (that conflict with the carbon disclosure objectives). With AI data center factories requiring abundant, cheap fossil fuels to generate the needed power on-site, net-zero is no longer part of their game.
How will the CDP redefine itself? Should they “suspend operations pending a review”? The NGO is flush with cash so I suspect they can wait it out to see how this transition plays out and they will surely reinvent themselves to meet the changing landscape of the climate game.
The last part of this series on the CDP will focus on the money – how the NGO is funded, how they spend their budgets, the foundations behind them and their motivations to keep funding them.