5 Moves That Fix Your ESG Score

ESG scores are structured assessments. MSCI, Sustainalytics, CDP, S&P Global CSA: each runs its own methodology, but the logic underneath is shared. They score disclosure quality, governance mechanisms, and verifiable commitments. They penalise gaps, inconsistencies, and vague pledges. Most companies that underperform on ESG ratings are not failing on sustainability ambition. They are failing on what the assessments actually measure. The S&P Global CSA alone converts over 1,000 data points per company into a score. These are systems with specific inputs and specific scoring criteria, and treating them as anything else is why so many companies leave a full rating tier on the table. CDP, for instance, uses a four-tier scoring system where disclosure completeness is the first gate: fail to answer enough questions and you cannot progress to higher scoring levels regardless of your actual environmental performance.

Here are five moves that shift scores.

 

1. Fix Your Scope 3 Data Before You Fix Your Scope 3 Emissions

 

Companies lose ESG points on Scope 3 not because the number is too high but because the disclosure is too thin. The GHG Protocol defines 15 Scope 3 categories. ISS ESG research found that roughly 70% of reported Scope 3 figures get discarded in their analysis because of quality failures, most commonly incomplete category coverage. As of 2025, only 29% of publicly traded companies globally report Scope 3 at all, according to ISS Corporate data. Among those that do, many cover just three or four categories and provide no methodology notes.

Ratings agencies score on coverage and method, not the headline number. A company disclosing across 12 categories with documented calculation approaches, stated assumptions, and year-on-year comparisons will outscore one reporting a lower absolute figure across four categories with no methodology. CDP's climate questionnaire asks companies to explain every excluded Scope 3 category and docks points for unexplained omissions. For the 2026 A-List, CDP now requires third-party verification of at least 70% of one Scope 3 category.

The practical sequence: screen all 15 categories, document which are material, explain exclusions, describe the calculation method for each reported category, and provide comparisons across years. Even spend-based estimates for harder categories count, so long as the methodology is transparent. A 2026 Sphera survey found that 45% of sustainability leaders now collect emissions data directly from suppliers rather than relying on industry averages. That shift in data quality feeds directly into how agencies assess your disclosure.

 

2. Tie Executive Compensation to ESG Targets

 

Governance carries serious weight in every major framework. S&P Global CSA's general criteria, which include corporate governance, account for 40 to 50% of the total assessment depending on industry. MSCI evaluates executive compensation structures within its governance pillar. CDP's 2025 A-List criteria explicitly include whether climate-related performance metrics are linked to executive pay.

The move that scores well is not adding a sustainability line to the CEO's bonus objectives. It is disclosing the exact metrics, the weighting, and the payout outcomes. Named KPIs (emissions reduction percentage, renewable energy share, diversity targets), stated weightings (say, 10% of short-term incentive or 15% of long-term incentive plan), and transparent reporting on whether targets were hit and what was paid. According to the Conference Board, 77% of S&P 500 companies now incorporate some form of ESG metric into executive compensation (2024 disclosures), up from two thirds in 2021. But many do it vaguely. The ones that score well are specific. Danone ties three sustainability criteria to CEO long-term pay, each weighted at 10%, covering GHG emissions, sugar reduction, and water consumption, all disclosed in its remuneration report. Celine, within the LVMH group, won a LIFE 360 Award in December 2025 for formally integrating ESG criteria into Executive Committee performance evaluations. Shell links bonus outcomes to energy transition metrics including carbon intensity. The pattern is the same: specificity, disclosure, and consequence.

 

3. Get Third-Party Assurance on Your Sustainability Report

 

Self-reported sustainability data, from a ratings perspective, is unverified data. Agencies treat it accordingly. A study published in the Review of Accounting Studies, covering S&P 500 companies from 2010 to 2020, found that third-party assurance is associated with improvements in ESG disclosure quality, ESG ratings, and institutional investor holdings. A separate finding: companies obtaining sustainability assurance saw a 0.7% reduction in their cost of capital. Despite this, a KPMG survey of over 750 companies found 75% do not feel equipped to have their ESG data independently assured.

Two levels exist. Limited assurance is a review of whether reported data is plausible, resulting in a negative conclusion: nothing has come to our attention suggesting material misstatement. Reasonable assurance is closer to a financial audit, testing data against sources, evaluating methodologies, and producing a positive opinion: the data presents fairly in all material respects. The EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive now requires limited assurance, with a move to reasonable assurance expected by 2028. CDP's 2026 A-List requirements mandate third-party verification of 100% of Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Companies that get to reasonable assurance before regulation forces them there send a governance signal that agencies and investors register. SEC estimates put the cost at roughly $75,000 to $145,000 for limited assurance and $115,000 to $235,000 for reasonable assurance for large filers. Against the capital access implications of a ratings upgrade, those numbers look modest.

 

4. Put a Sustainability Expert on the Board

 

Not a committee. Not a Chief Sustainability Officer who reports to the board. A director with demonstrable environmental or social expertise, sitting where capital allocation and strategy decisions get made.

S&P Global CSA and MSCI both assess board-level ESG competence. The question they try to answer is whether sustainability governance sits inside fiduciary oversight or is delegated to an operational function. Companies with identifiable ESG expertise at director level score higher on governance metrics consistently. What counts as expertise: prior executive roles in environmental management or energy transition, board service on sustainability-focused organisations, relevant technical or academic credentials. It needs to be identifiable and disclosed in the proxy statement or governance report.

A board that includes a former Chief Sustainability Officer among its directors is making a different governance statement than one that has a sustainability committee with no named expertise. The difference shows up in scoring because it signals that environmental and social considerations have a voice in capital allocation, risk oversight, and strategic planning rather than being filtered through management before reaching the board. CDP's 2025 scoring criteria require board-level oversight of the transition plan for A-List consideration. Companies that added board-level ESG expertise and disclosed it clearly in their governance reporting have found it to be among the fastest paths to a governance score improvement. This is one of the simplest moves on this list and one of the most overlooked.

 

5. Publish a Transition Plan With Interim Targets

 

A net-zero pledge without a transition plan is a scoring liability. CDP made this explicit: without a 1.5°C-aligned climate transition plan, a company cannot score above B on the climate questionnaire. For the A-List, the plan must be publicly available, include board-level oversight, and contain financial mapping for the transition. In 2024, only 416 of 24,800 disclosing companies, roughly 1.7%, earned A-List status.

A credible transition plan includes interim milestones (2030 targets, not just 2050), capex alignment showing how spending supports decarbonisation, scenario analysis across different warming pathways, and sector-specific decarbonisation pathways grounded in science-based methodology. Companies with SBTi-validated targets score higher than those with unvalidated pledges. The UK's Transition Plan Taskforce disclosure framework is becoming a de facto reference point, and companies that align with it strengthen their positioning on both CDP and MSCI.

The transition plan also needs governance: who owns delivery, how progress is tracked, and what triggers a course correction. CDP rewards plans integrated into financial planning, not plans that sit in a standalone sustainability PDF. Making CDP responses public rather than keeping them confidential has also been associated with score improvements, as it signals commitment to transparency that the methodology explicitly values.

 

What Connects These Five

 

ESG scores do not reward ambition in the abstract. They reward specificity, verification, governance integration, and disclosure quality. A company can run the most progressive sustainability programme in its sector and still score a B if the programme is not disclosed in the format agencies assess, assured by an independent party, and embedded in board-level governance.

None of these five moves requires a company to fundamentally rethink its business model. They require it to rethink how it communicates, governs, and verifies the sustainability work it is already doing. That distinction matters because it means the gap between a company's actual ESG performance and its ESG score is often a disclosure and governance gap, not a performance gap. Closing it takes the same rigour companies apply to financial reporting: clear metrics, external verification, board oversight, and transparent disclosure of both progress and shortfalls. The companies that treat ESG scoring this way find the ratings follow. The ones that treat it as a communications project keep asking why they do not.