This is the second time Innergex, a renewables developer, operator and owner, has been ranked number one by the Corporate Knights Best 50 index. Previously holding the position in 2023, this is the first time it leads the list under the newly revamped scoring methodology, which focus more squarely on sustainable revenue and sustainable investment, as well as – crucially – the compound annual growth rate of sustainable revenue.

Innergex’s financial footing is now stronger than ever, thanks to its July 2025 acquisition by Quebec pension fund manager La Caisse (formerly the CDPQ) in a deal valued at nearly $10 billion, of which La Caisse paid $2 billion. The Quebec investment fund bought Hydro-Québec’s shares and allocated up to 20% of its investment to other long-term investors, to help Innergex defend against market shocks and focus on its long-term objectives. These investors include Investissement Québec (which invested $500 million), Quebec-based Desjardins Global Asset Management, and union-based fund manager Fondaction Asset Management, along with 14 Swiss institutional investors. Innergex has now been privatized as a result of the investment.

Gaining access to so much “patient capital” is critical for a company like Innergex, whose core business is building long-term infrastructure, CEO Jean Trudel says. “Building energy projects, whether it’s hydro, wind or solar, is a long-time investment,” he says. The slow-return capital deployed by La Caisse is essential for making these kinds of projects work, and the bank is “ready to deploy more capital to help us go further,” Trudel says.

Diversification and consolidation

Innergex currently produces 4,424 megawatts of clean energy, with another 12,000 megawatts in the ready-to-bid stage. “Innergex is planning to grow,” Trudel says, pointing to the company’s mission to decarbonize grids as a way to fight climate change.

The company now operates in four markets: Canada, the United States, France and Chile. It has also diversified beyond its roots in hydropower to focus now on hydro, wind, solar and battery storage, while bringing its expertise and technologies to foreign markets.

In 2025, Innergex switched on its Hale Kuawehi solar and battery storage plant in Hawaii. The project integrates 30 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity with four hours of battery storage. Innergex has since sold this project but remains active in battery projects elsewhere, like in France, where it is working with the Réseau de transport d’électricité to balance the country’s electricity system, using its Tonnerre nine megawatt-hour battery energy storage system.

Innergex is developing relationships with industries that also benefit from decarbonization, such as in Chile. Businesses are now open to having conversations about renewable sources powering their operations, Trudel says, including mining companies BHP and Codelco. “It’s very valuable for an industry to be able to say it’s 100% renewable,” he says.

Innergex is also prepared to meet Hydro-Québec’s new focus on expanding solar energy generation through Quebec. In April, it announced in its first solar farm tender call for 60 projects.

Trudel dismisses claims that La Caisse plans to merge Innergex with another Quebec renewable powerhouse, Boralex. “We have no anticipation of being merged,” he says, acknowledging that it is a common question given that both companies are based in Quebec. La Caisse’s main mission is to stimulate the Quebec economy and protect Quebec-based businesses. “It’s not necessarily contradictory that the Caisse would support both.”

While Innergex has developed its offerings among multiple forms of renewable generation, there’s one arena it has decided to exit: geothermal. “As much as geothermal is a great energy source, it’s very different from the [energy] sources we have at the moment,” Trudel says. “It’s a lot more akin to mining, where you have to drill holes to get to the resource underground.”

Overall, the future for sustainable energy and for Innergex is bright, Trudel says. “The demand is strong, our positioning is good, and we have a strong owner with patient capital and deep pockets.”

Jax Jacobsen is a Montreal-based journalist who specializes in mining, business and climate.

The post Quebec renewables powerhouse Innergex is taking the long view appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In economic circumstances like these, sustainability initiatives are often put on the back burner. But this year, the companies on Corporate Knights’ Best 50 Corporate Citizens list are reorienting their business models around energy resilience and green opportunities. As the Canadian economy navigates a major transition, these companies are proof that sustainability is one of the keys to boosting your bottom line for the long term.

Following a shift in methodology, the Best 50 ranking – click to jump to the table now – saw the arrival of 10 newcomers to the list from diverse industries, including real estate, transit, waste management and mining. In fact, the mining sector took six spots on this year’s list – only one fewer than the pure-play power generation companies that tend to dominate sustainability rankings.

Innergex Renewable Energy took the top spot, moving up from third in 2025, and last year’s top-ranked company, Boralex, another Quebec-based renewable-energy provider, dropped to seventh. Other notable movements in the ranking include Telus, which jumped from 15th to third position, and Cascades Inc., a packaging company that moved from 20th to eighth spot. Canadian Apartment Properties, the highest ranking of any new company on the list, came in at 16th, just ahead of Stantec, the second-ranked company last year.

Here are six more standout firms on this year’s list.

The pure-play pacesetter: Polaris (2)

The Toronto-based renewable-energy company Polaris has been steadily expanding its presence across Latin America and the Caribbean. Like other renewable-energy companies on the list, 100% of its revenues are deemed sustainable in the Corporate Knights methodology, yet its movement in the rankings – from 12th to second – is unique, owing to a 21% jump in revenues between 2022 and 2024. The company’s portfolio has now grown to include hydroelectric projects in Peru and Ecuador, a geothermal plant in Nicaragua, solar fields in Panama and the Dominican Republic, and most recently, a wind farm in Puerto Rico. In 2025 alone, the company estimated that these projects saved more than 346,148 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. With Polaris’s presence in emerging markets and its unique niche in the renewable-energy space, it has financially outperformed many of its industry competitors.

The fossil-fuel displacer: Kruger (5)

Kruger Products rose to fifth in the ranking from 34th last year, the second-largest year-over-year jump of any company. The company whose majority shareholder is Kruger Inc., a  fourth-generation family-run pulp and paper company, has expanded over its 122-year history to include clean-energy ventures and a much wider portfolio of everyday essential items like food packaging and labels. Kruger Products has brought to market innovative biomaterials and recycled paper products, displacing cheap fossil-fuel-based plastics. Business as usual at Kruger Products preserves millions of trees annually, and it was the first company in its category to obtain a certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a stalwart of forest preservation amid scandals with other, larger certifying bodies. Today, not only does the company produce more than 158 FSC-certified products, but it has invested in new facilities that produce exclusively these products.

The standard-setter: Eldorado Gold (20)

One of the top mining companies in the ranking, Eldorado Gold has been widely recognized as a pioneer of sustainable industry practices. It has mining operations in Canada as well as Turkey and Greece, and it has won several industry awards for environmental excellence. Most recently, its Kışladağ gold mine in Turkey won the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) Environmental Excellence Award for a solar-powered water infrastructure project. Designed in partnership with six villages near the mine, this new infrastructure services more than 350 households by eliminating the energy costs associated with pumping clean water. Back on home soil, Eldorado Gold’s Lamaque Complex in Quebec recently became one of just five mines in the world to receive a AAA environmental and social rating from the Mining Association of Canada for its exemplary management of mining waste, water stewardship, biodiversity conservation, and its Indigenous community relations.

The green grower: Vancity (9)

Canada’s largest community credit union, Vancity, registered the biggest increase in sustainable revenues over the ranking period, growing 266% from $4.69 million in 2022 to $65.23 million in 2024. It’s an impressive leap, but as director of rankings Michael Yow explains, Vancity went up because the company now discloses more investments that qualify as sustainable in the Corporate Knights methodology. Those investments haven’t significantly changed, and the company has a long-standing legacy of offering progressive financial products. It created Canada’s first socially responsible mutual fund, as well as its first registered education savings plan. Today, it offers innovative mortgages specifically for affordable housing, supports equity initiatives for marginalized communities, and offers environmental financial products from which some of the profits are donated to sustainability causes.

The circular-economy champion: Waste Connections (43)

Waste Connections is one of the largest waste-management companies in North America. In some markets, the company is now diverting as much as 70% of the waste it collects from landfills, and it has introduced new composting technology and better reporting tools to track diversion. With 23 landfill-gas generating facilities across its portfolio, it is also capturing and putting to good use a significant share of the methane produced by the rest of the waste – enough to power about 312,000 homes for a year. The company has invested in improving operational greenhouse gas emissions, deploying a fleet of 1,000 electric or compressed natural gas vehicles, and has introduced software to optimize routes for better fuel consumption. And its ambitions are larger still: last year, Waste Connections announced it would boost its recycling goal by 30% and committed $500 million to achieving its sustainability targets.

The transition torchbearer: Énergir (24)

It may seem strange to find Quebec’s largest natural gas company on a sustainability ranking, but the 24th-ranked Énergir has actually slipped several spots from last year’s 14th position. In this year’s rankings, Corporate Knights awarded the company a perfect sustainable revenue score despite only a modest increase in sustainable revenues between 2022 and 2024. Yow, the director of rankings, attributes the perfect score to increased revenues from renewable natural gas and wind projects. Énergir secured an ownership stake in one of Canada’s largest wind development projects in Seigneurie de Beaupré, invested in new biomethane infrastructure in Saint-Sophie and Saint-Flavien, and is also piloting a new green hydrogen project.

Canada’s Best 50 Corporate Citizens for 2026

The post Amid trade upheaval, Canada’s most sustainable firms are building a more resilient economy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The top three international performers this year are Schneider Electric SE (France), Tesla Inc. (USA) and Novo Nordisk A/S (Denmark), with overall sustainability scores of 72.69%, 69.79% and 68.46%, respectively. Schneider Electric was the top company on the 2025 Global 100 list. Apart from Tesla, two other U.S. firms made the cut: Cisco Systems, a multinational specializing in networking hardware, and HP Inc., a manufacturer of personal computers and printers. Technology and industrial firms dominate the list, with most linked to electrification and digital infrastructure. Unilever PLC, in eighth place, is the only traditional fast‑moving consumer goods company on this year’s list.

“Corporate investment is a major preoccupation in Canada today, but quality matters at least as much as quantity,” Corporate Knights’ CEO and co-founder Toby Heaps said in a statement. “Our Best 50 analysis shows that economy-wide, investment in sustainable activities is growing materially faster than its non-sustainable counterparts – and that’s one of the most important and encouraging economic signals we’ve seen.”

RELATED STORIES

Amid trade upheaval, Canada’s most sustainable firms are building a more resilient economy

2026 Best 50 Corporate Citizens methodology

Press release | Canada’s Best 50 Corporate Citizens for 2026

Discover this year’s full list of Canada’s Best 50 Corporate Citizens

The post Canada’s top international corporate citizens of 2026 appeared first on Corporate Knights.

To answer these questions, the Corporate Knights research group assesses eligible companies and scores them using three equally weighted indicators:

1. The share of revenue from sustainable products and services
2. The share of investments directed toward sustainable projects
3. The sustainable revenue momentum, which is the compound annual growth rate in sustainable revenue from 2022 to 2024

Companies can also earn a bonus of up to 5% for linking CEO pay to sustainability targets. Additionally, they face deductions of up to 5% each for legal sanctions and workplace fatalities. Companies are benchmarked against industry peers across 64 groupings.

The post 2026 Best 50 Corporate Citizens methodology appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But as its member states confront political headwinds at home, the EU has opted to dilute some sustainability efforts while putting others at risk. Some business leaders have supported the deregulation push and encouraged doubts over whether competitiveness and sustainability goals can co-exist. But other public companies have committed to their sustainable business efforts and found the answer: sustainability isn’t just a moral imperative, but a winning strategy.

Now in its second year, Corporate Knights’ 2026 Europe 50 list identifies the big European publicly traded companies that are thriving and setting the tone for global sustainability efforts. In 2024, these companies collectively generated US$1.2 trillion in revenues, with sustainable products and services contributing an average of 56%. Of the companies that made the cut, 33 also made Corporate Knights’ 2026 Global 100 list.

“From Danish wind turbines to Spanish renewables infrastructure and Turkish circular-economy appliances, the Europe 50 shows that sustainable business is not a niche – it’s the mainstream growth story across sectors and geographies,” Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps said in a statement. “These companies are not waiting for policy certainty. They are writing the playbook.”

The top company

When it comes to energy companies, it’s no surprise that ERG (#1) took the top spot on this year’s list – and is also number one on this year’s Global 100 list. Headquartered in Genoa, Italy, the company announced the sale of its final fossil fuel asset in 2023 and is now purely a wind and solar energy company. Between 2022 and 2024, ERG’s power generation grew by 40%, from 4,956 to 6,959 gigawatt hours, which is enough capacity to fully charge 670 million electric vehicles.

The fast track

The companies with the highest compound annual growth rate of sustainable revenue.

Industria de Diseño Textil (#16), parent company to fashion brands Zara, Massimo Dutti and several others, used a total of 73% of “lower-impact” materials (like organic cotton or certified-European linen) and recycled fibres in its products. The company, which has its headquarters in Arteixo, Spain, grew its revenue from eco-certified products, including Global Organic Textile Standard and Recycled Claim Standard. Overall, its sustainable compound annual growth revenue grew 121.5%, with sustainable revenue making up more than half of the company’s total revenue.

Home appliances company Arçelik (#23) had even higher sustainable revenue momentum, at 167.7%. The company, which is based in Istanbul, had a global turnover of €10.6 million (US$16.8 million), and Beko Europe, the European arm, is a major player in the European appliances market. While sustainable revenue makes up only 15.5% of total revenue, the company more than doubled the total number of its refurbished products between 2022 and 2024. With refurbishment centres operating in Turkey, Italy, the United Kingdom and Romania, the company has ambitions to increase the amount of reconditioned products it sells, though it hasn’t committed to a specific target.

Vonovia (#32) – Headquartered in Bochum, Germany, Vonovia owns and manages more than one million residential units across Europe. It is the continent’s largest real estate company and had one of the fastest-growing shares of sustainable revenue, at 127.8%, which came from energy-efficient homes, according to Corporate Knights’ methodology. Across Vonovia’s entire portfolio, the company decreased energy consumption from 5.5 million megawatt-hours in 2022 to 5.2 million in 2024 — the equivalent of switching off 3.4 million LED bulbs for a year. At the same time, it increased energy from renewable sources from 10% to 19% over the same period.

The breakout firm

A company with a small percentage of sustainable revenue but high sustainable compound annual growth rate.

While 3.2% of total sustainable revenue is small, BNP Paribas (#40), a multinational bank and financial holding company, has managed to grow this share by 94.7% since 2022. Based in Paris, the bank has stepped up its financing for low-carbon energy from €28.2 billion to €38.3 billion and has grown its portfolio of standardized sustainable products, such as bonds, investments and loans.

The pure-play behemoth

A large-cap pure-play company with high sustainable revenue and investment.

Novonesis (#4), based in Bagsværd, Denmark, is a biosolutions company that emerged from a 2024 merger with a total market capitalization of €25.6 billion (US$40.6 billion). By using microbes and enzymes to transform consumer products, Novonesis finds alternatives to petrochemicals or synthetic chemicals in more than 30 sectors, from baking to carbon capture to textiles. Novonesis’s revenue was €3.8 billion in 2024 and was listed as 100% sustainable, according to Corporate Knights’ methodology.

The enabler

A bank with high sustainable revenue and investment.

The Turkish bank Turkiye Sinai Kalkinma Bankasi (#21) had 4.25 times more – an absolute total of 20.4% – sustainable revenue than the other banks on the list. The Istanbul-based institution is a private development and investment bank that provides financing to projects that promote both environmental and social sustainability, such as gender equality initiatives that support women’s employment.

RELATED STORIES

To boost competitiveness, Europe proposes slashing key climate rules

Italy’s ERG proves you can trade oil for renewables and win

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put weapons makers back in responsible investment funds

The waste-to-wealth winner

A company at the forefront of the circular economy.

Séché Environnement (#17), based in Paris, is a waste management company that handles a variety of waste streams – hazardous, household, medical – and also cleans up industrial, natural and urban sites. Instead of disposing of solid non-hazardous and non-recyclable waste, the company converts it into solid recovered fuels, or SRF, which can act as a replacement to fossil fuels in furnaces or kilns for industries or urban heat networks. Nearly all of Séché Environnement’s investments were directed toward sustainability, which earned it a sustainable investment ratio of 91.5%, using Corporate Knights’ methodology.

2026 Europe 50

The post These top European firms are stepping up their sustainable growth appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Sustainable revenue momentum powers leading corporate citizenship

• Renewable power generators lead the 2026 ranking, with telecom, transit and forest products also represented in the top five spots.
• Methodology update focuses on sustainable investments and revenues, along with an urgency-driven sustainable-revenue momentum score.
• Publicly traded Best 50 Corporate Citizens again outperformed their peers financially, earning 798% gross return since the ranking launched in June 2002, versus 759% for the S&P/TSX Composite.

Toronto, June 23, 2026 — Two renewable power generators lead the 2026 Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada ranking, with seven different industries represented across the top 10. Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. reclaimed the number one position it last held in 2023, while Polaris Renewable Energy Inc. jumped from 12th place in 2025 to second this year. The telecom sector rounds out this year’s top three among the Best 50, with Telus Corp. taking third spot.

Longueuil, QC-based Innergex enjoys extensive access to “patient capital” following its recent acquisition and privatization — a critical attribute when focusing on long-term infrastructure buildout. With operations in four countries and across multiple forms of renewable generation, Innergex currently produces 4,424 megawatts of clean energy, with another 12,000 in the ready-to-bid stage.

Toronto-based Polaris has steadily expanded its presence across Latin America and the Caribbean, with a carbon-cutting portfolio that now includes hydroelectric projects in Peru and Ecuador, a geothermal plant in Nicaragua, solar fields in Panama and the Dominican Republic, and a wind farm in Puerto Rico.

Launched in 2002, this year’s Best 50 ranking is the 25th iteration. All Canadian corporations with at least $1 billion in annual revenues are assessed.¹ For 2026, the transparent and quantitative methodology was updated to focus on three equally weighted metrics: share of investments and share of revenues that are sustainable (as defined under the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy), and the sustainable-revenue momentum score, which tracks growth in sustainable revenues from 2022 to 2024. There are 10 new entrants on this year’s Best 50 list.

Among the 2026 Best 50 companies, 46.3 per cent of investments were classified as sustainable, in comparison to only 6.0 per cent among all other companies assessed. For sustainable revenues, comparative performance was 39.2 per cent for the Best 50 companies and 6.0 per cent for all other companies assessed.

On an economy-wide basis, growth in sustainable investments and revenues continues to far outpace growth in non-sustainable activities. Among all companies assessed, total sustainable investments increased 60% from 2019 to 2024 (2024: $39 billion), while sustainable revenues jumped 61% (2024: $146 billion). That contrasts with growth in non-sustainable investments of 51% and in non-sustainable revenues of 39% over the same period.

This year’s Best 50 cohort demonstrates the even more impressive pace that is possible, with growth in sustainable investments of 79% from 2019 to 2024, and growth in sustainable revenues of 94%.

Troublingly, however, $39 billion in total sustainable investments was down from $43 billion in last year’s ranking and $41 billion the year prior. Even more notably, investment levels continue to fall far short of requirements, with Canada’s recently appointed Taxonomy and Transition Planning Council citing the climate investment gap alone at $115 billion annually.

Concurrently with the Best 50 ranking, Corporate Knights is also releasing its 2026 Top 10 International Corporate Citizens in Canada list. It includes the highest-scoring companies in the recent Global 100 Ranking of the world’s most sustainable companies with at least $1 billion in revenues in Canada. The top three international performers were Schneider Electric SE (France), Tesla Inc. (USA) and Novo Nordisk A/S (Denmark).

Quotes — Attributable to Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps

“For 25 years, Canada’s Best 50 Corporate Citizens have set an impressive benchmark, demonstrating how to do business in a way that’s consistent with a healthy planet and society. With a recent compound annual growth rate in sustainable revenue of about 22%, they’re also laying the groundwork for the accelerated momentum we urgently need.”

“Corporate investment is a major preoccupation in Canada today, but quality matters at least as much as quantity. Our Best 50 analysis shows that economy-wide, investment in sustainable activities is growing materially faster than its non-sustainable counterparts – and that’s one of the most important and encouraging economic signals we’ve seen.”

A digital version of the ranking and further contextual and methodological information is available at corporateknights.com/rankings/best-50-rankings/2026-best-50/

Financial Returns: Best 50 vs. S&P/TSX Composite Index

On a total return basis, the stock market performance of the publicly traded Best 50 Corporate Citizens has outpaced that of its peers, earning 798% gross return since the launch of this ranking in June 2002, versus 759% for the S&P/TSX Composite.²

For interview requests and further information: kevin@kevinhanson.ca 416.219.1901

About Corporate Knights

Corporate Knights Inc. is an independent media and research company. Its media division publishes the award-winning sustainable-economy magazine Corporate Knights, circulated in The Globe and Mail, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. Its research division produces sustainability rankings, research reports and financial product ratings based on corporate sustainability performance. Learn more at www.corporateknights.com.

Toby Heaps, CEO, Corporate Knights
toby@corporateknights.com 416.274.1432

¹ With some additional inclusions (e.g. largest credit unions by assets under management). 356 companies were eligible for the 2026 Best 50 ranking.

² Timeframe for comparison is June 1, 2002 to April 30, 2026, with market cap weightings rebalanced annually on June 1.

The post Press release | Canada’s Best 50 Corporate Citizens for 2026 appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The U.S. companies that make up Corporate Knights’ first-ever USA 25 Most Sustainable Corporations ranking brought in more than $1.15 trillion in revenues in 2024, of which an average of 61% came from sustainable products or services. That included companies like Nvidia, whose super-efficient chips power much of the world’s AI infrastructure, and Tesla, which has single-handedly transformed the U.S. electric vehicle market.

Perhaps more notably, however, sustainable revenues as a share of the total are growing, and sustainable investments are poised to accelerate the transition. Michael Yow, director of rankings at Corporate Knights, points out that the average sustainable investment ratio for S&P 500 companies is less than 11%; for companies in this ranking, it is more than 62%. “It illustrates how sustainability leaders are already rewiring their business models for a low‑carbon economy while the broader market lags behind.”

The top company

Leading the ranking this year is Fluence (#1), a company out of Arlington, Virginia, that creates utility-scale energy-storage systems. Founded in 2018 from a partnership between Siemens, the German tech giant, and AES, the largest U.S.-based global power company, Fluence is one of a select group of companies playing a pivotal role in the shift to renewable power in the United States. The grid-level battery company currently has 296 projects globally storing 28.9 gigawatts of renewable energy.

Fluence doubled its sustainability revenues between 2022 and 2024 and earned a perfect sustainable investment score by pouring all its capital expenditure and research and development into new energy-storage solutions and supporting technology. In early 2025, the company announced “breakthrough” modular stacks that can store 30% more power over the same footprint as previous generations of the technology. Additionally, Fluence – which also placed fourth in this year’s Global 100 ranking – is deploying AI-optimized software to help maintain its infrastructure and to assist with bidding in the notoriously complex and volatile wholesale energy market.

The fast track

The companies with highest compound annual growth rate of sustainable revenue

Among the companies with the fastest-growing share of sustainable revenues was
Prologis (#17), a San Francisco–based real estate investment trust.
Prologis owns more than 5,800 facilities, mostly warehouses and commercial spaces,
spanning 1.3 billion square feet across 20 countries. In the last year, the company
secured sustainable building certifications for all the eligible buildings and since
2021 has achieved 626 megawatts of solar power and storage capacity across its portfolio.

Sustainable revenues still account for only about 19% of the company’s total revenues, but since 2022 those revenues have grown 239% annualized. Yow points out that a significant share of the buildings that did not qualify under the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy in 2022 now do, thanks to the company’s efforts.

Nvidia (#10), the world’s largest company by market capitalization, also had one of the fastest-growing shares of sustainable revenue. It saw a 124% increase over 2022 for total sustainable revenues of about $75 billion. Most of those earnings are attributable to the company’s ultra-efficient computer chips that now make up the majority of global AI data-centre infrastructure. These chips are up to 25 times more energy efficient per watt than traditional, general-purpose central processing units and up to 300 times more water efficient than air-cooled computing architecture.

There was one more company, Bristol-Myers Squibb (#25), that registered an even higher sustainable revenue compound annual growth rate, at 342%, but as Yow explains, its circumstances are unique. Revenues at pharmaceutical companies in the ranking are considered sustainable if they come from the sale of drugs included on the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines list. Bristol-Myers Squibb sells several of these medicines, but in 2022, a significant share of those revenues were not credited in full. This was because a significant portion of the cash flow from those revenues went toward share buybacks, dividend payments and senior executive compensation, rather than being reinvested in the company. Since 2022, the share of eligible revenues at Bristol-Myers Squibb has shifted, hence the increase.

Come-from-behind corporation

A company with a small percentage of sustainable revenue but high sustainable compound annual growth rate

At Hologic (#16), a healthcare company out of Massachusetts, about 19% of its $4.03 billion in 2024 revenues were sustainable, representing an annualized increase of 50% since 2022. This change is attributable to the increased sales of its medical solutions for women’s health, particularly breast cancer. Many of Hologic’s systems, including those used for imaging and biopsy, have been classified by the World Health Organization as “indispensable” for quality healthcare delivery.

Transition majors

Companies with small sustainable revenue but high sustainable investment

American Water Works Company (#19) is a 140-year-old company and the largest regulated provider of water and wastewater utilities in the United States. Based in Camden, New Jersey, and delivering services to more than 14 million people in 18 states, its share of sustainable revenues was small relative to the scale of its operation, but its sustainable investments were significant. Last year, the company reportedly invested $3.2 billion in infrastructure improvements (in 2024, the company brought in $4.6 billion in revenue). This included pipe replacement and water treatment upgrades, as well as remediation for PFAS (known as “forever chemicals”) that have been commonly detected in drinking water.

Another one of the senior companies on the list, the 146-year-old automotive manufacturer BorgWarner (#21), operating out of Auburn Hills, Michigan, also earned high marks for its sustainable investments. The company has been focused on developing new parts for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, including motors, transmissions and battery systems.

The pure-play behemoth

A large-cap pure-play company with high sustainable revenue and investment, but also penalties

Given this year’s refocusing of the methodology on sustainable revenues, investment and growth, it should come as little surprise that Tesla (#9) remains a fixture on the list. Now based in Texas, the company recorded $97.69 billion in revenues in 2024, 100% of which was registered as sustainable in the Corporate Knights methodology. It should be noted, however, that the company did suffer several penalties related to a $1.5-million settlement over the alleged mishandling of hazardous waste, and another to a fatality at its Texas Gigafactory.

RELATED STORIES

The 2026 Global 100 list puts speed in the spotlight

There’s a paradox at the heart of Nvidia’s sustainability performance

Asia Pacific’s green champions step into the spotlight

Waste-to-wealth winners

Companies at the forefront of the circular economy

Enviri (#11) is a Pennsylvania-based waste-management firm that specializes in complex environmental challenges. Across three divisions, it has recycled nearly 440,000 tons of hazardous material, 3.1 million tons of contaminated soil and 85 million gallons of wastewater – in all, about 92% of the materials it collects. These materials are used to create the company’s “ecoproducts” such as cement additives, construction aggregate, asphalt and cost-effective alternatives to raw materials used in concrete and brick.

CMC (#22) is one of the primary suppliers of the steel rebar used to reinforce the concrete in buildings, bridges and roads across the United States. With 212 facilities, the Texas-based company boasts an impressive record in an industry that has, traditionally, had a large environmental footprint: 17 billion pounds of scrap metal saved from landfills, 82% less energy and 62% less carbon dioxide than traditional steelmaking, and 100% recycled steel in all of its products.

2026 USA 25 Most Sustainable Corporations

The post How big business is rewriting the U.S. sustainability story appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The Asia Pacific 50 Most Sustainable Corporations ranking spotlights unique sustainability sectors throughout the eastern hemisphere: green finance and electric vehicles in China, wind power in India, hydroelectricity in New Zealand and advanced high-speed rail in Taiwan.

The average sustainable revenue among the companies on Corporate Knights’ Asia 50 ranking was 65.5%, notes Michael Yow, Corporate Knights’ director of rankings. By comparison, the iShares Asia 50 ETF, which tracks the S&P Asia 50 Index, had an average sustainable revenue of only 3.8%. “This disparity suggests that investors using conventional large-cap benchmarks may be significantly underexposed to companies generating revenue from sustainable economic activities, despite the growing materiality of sustainability-related risks and opportunities among Asian companies,” Yow says.

How the ranking was made

To compose the list, Corporate Knights researchers rank publicly listed companies with more than US$1 billion in revenue based on their sustainability performance. Three key questions guide their analysis: To what extent are a company’s investments geared toward sustainability? Where does its sustainable revenue come from? And how fast is its sustainable revenue growing?

To answer these questions, the Corporate Knights research group relies on three equally weighted indicators: the share of revenue from sustainable products and services; the share of investments directed toward sustainable projects; and what they call “sustainable revenue momentum,” which is the compound annual growth rate in sustainable revenue from 2022 to 2024. This last metric was introduced to the Corporate Knights sustainability rankings this year, to reflect the urgency of the energy transition and the shift to a green economy.

Companies can also earn a bonus of up to 5% for linking CEO pay to sustainability targets. Alternatively, they face deductions of up to 5% each for legal sanctions and workplace fatalities. Companies are benchmarked against industry peers across 64 groupings.

The top company for 2026

Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation (THSRC) tops this year’s Asia 50 ranking – and not only because nearly all its revenues come from its low-carbon, high-speed rail service. Over the past year the company stepped up investments in its electrified network, completing major extensions, replacements and upgrades. Its revenue rose from 37 billion Taiwan dollars in 2022 to TWD 53 billion in 2024, driven by its consistently strong performance in the operation and management of its rail lines.

THSRC has ranked in the top 5% of listed companies in the Corporate Governance Evaluation, an annual assessment by the Taiwan Stock Exchange, for eight consecutive years, and has been a persistent selection for the FTSE4Good TIP Taiwan ESG Index, which tracks Taiwanese companies with stronger-than-average environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, since 2018. It has also become a regular presence on the Corporate Knights Global 100, placing fifth in 2025 and 2026 and fourth in 2024.

THSRC’s inherently low-carbon business model is only part of the story: it also uses measurable and improving environmental key performance indicators for its energy consumption, water conservation and waste recycling – reports transparently in line with global standards. Even though its trains are all-electric, Taiwan’s grid is largely powered by coal and natural gas, so THSRC discloses its greenhouse gas emissions with third-party verification and works to cut its carbon intensity. THSRC has also installed solar panels at some of its stations and depots to reduce the carbon footprint of its operations.

RELATED STORIES

How China’s energy transition engine is driving change in the Global South

The 2026 Global 100 list puts speed in the spotlight

Western carmakers face growing pressure from Chinese EVs

But THSRC isn’t the only company that stands out from the list. Looking closely at the inaugural Asia Pacific 50 Most Sustainable Corporations, several stories emerge.

The fast track

Among the three companies with the highest sustainable compound annual growth rate (CAGR), one finances renewable-energy generation and the other two make electric vehicles.

1. Industrial Bank Co. Ltd. (#16), commonly known as CIB, significantly expanded its renewables portfolio over the past year, aggressively financing large-scale wind and solar projects under its “All-Green” strategy. Headquartered in Fuzhou, Fujian, CIB deploys green bonds and specialized credit lines to support China’s carbon-neutrality goals. The bank’s green loans are growing faster than traditional corporate loans, reflecting a strategic pivot toward sustainable infrastructure. As China’s first bank to adopt the Equator Principles for environmental and social risk management, CIB has prioritized clean energy over high-emission industries and integrated ESG metrics into its core credit-approval process. CIB’s sustainable revenue momentum stands out because while its sustainable revenue ratio is only 7%, its CAGR is 132%.
2. Seres (#26) is part of China’s new crop of automotive stars, even though it was founded almost four decades ago. Based in Chongqing, the company started out making components for shock absorbers and household appliances. But in the mid-2010s, its parent company, now known as Seres Group, launched a vehicle-manufacturing arm, and in 2019 Seres rolled out its first EV, the SF5. Although that debut met with only muted market response, Seres has since partnered with Huawei Technologies to co-develop better-selling Aito-branded EVs. Seres saw its revenue increase in 2024 by more than 300%; this past year brought more strong performance, with higher margins and increased investment in research and development.
3. Li Auto Inc. (#10) is coming off a hard year, which saw the pioneering EV company deliver 19% fewer vehicles than 2024. The downshift followed several years of high demand for its extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs), which carry small gas-powered engines to top up the battery, and where the carmaker had been an early leader. But as competition heats up and technology improves for more affordable battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), Li Auto is fighting to retain its leadership position. The company plans to double down on EREVs while still transitioning to BEVs.

The waste-to-wealth winner

Among companies at the forefront of the circular economy, the Australian supply-chain logistics company Brambles Ltd. (#9) stands out for its “share and reuse” system for pallets, crates and containers. This model eliminates the need for customers to purchase and manage their own equipment, instead allowing them to borrow standardized platforms and then return them for reconditioning and redistribution. The company’s pooling approach also offers a sustainability advantage: shared assets reduce the total number of pallets and containers in circulation, thereby cutting down on waste, deforestation and carbon emissions compared to traditional pallets and crates.

The transition enabler

Looking at banks with high sustainable lending, Taiwan’s Chang Hwa Commercial Bank Ltd. (#42) is exceptional, with a CAGR of 48% thanks to its marked increase in lending to renewable-energy, circular‑economy and low‑carbon-manufacturing projects. Chang Hwa has set a target to phase out investment and financing for coal and unconventional fossil fuels by 2040. Notably, this 120-year-old bank also ranked 42nd on the World’s Safest Banks 2025: Emerging Markets Top 50 by Global Finance, thanks to its strong balance sheet and conservative risk profile.

The long-game player

We looked for companies with small sustainable revenue but high sustainable investment to see who’s leaning hardest into the green shift. StarHub (#50) showed that targeted, long-term investment – not revenue growth alone – defines value. The Singapore-based telecommunications company has channelled capital into cloud transformation, renewable energy and cybersecurity, and backed this up with science‑based climate targets, long‑term renewable power-purchase agreements and executive pay tied directly to ESG performance.

The pure-play behemoth

When you’re near the ocean, you keep an eye out for whales. Likewise, on a ranking like this, it’s interesting to look out for the big pure-play companies with high sustainable revenue and investment. One major standout in the clean-energy revolution is LG Energy Solution (#14), the battery arm of LG Corp., which has grown its manufacturing business by securing long-term supply agreements with major global automakers including General Motors, Stellantis and Hyundai. LG now boasts joint-venture gigafactories in North America and Europe alongside Asia to meet surging demand. The company has also capitalized on the rapid global build-out of grid-scale and commercial energy storage, emerging as one of the leading suppliers for utilities and renewable projects.

The post Asia Pacific’s green champions step into the spotlight appeared first on Corporate Knights.

By one estimate, Nvidia provides the hardware for more than 70% of the market for AI chips, and estimates from 2023/2024 suggested it was previously closer to 95%. This is because Nvidia chips are exceptionally efficient, performing the heavy computational tasks required for machine learning at a much lower energy threshold than common computer chips.

“This year we created a definition for sustainability in AI hardware based on energy processing per unit,” explains Michael Yow, director of rankings at Corporate Knights. The sustainability threshold used by Corporate Knights is measured in gigaFLOPS (floating-point operations per second) per watt, the number of computations performed per watt of energy. The threshold was first established by the Green500, a ranking in which Nvidia’s Grace Hopper chips power seven of the top 10 most energy-efficient supercomputer systems.

As a result, $75 billion of Nvidia’s 2025 revenues – about 57% of the total – was deemed sustainable according to the Corporate Knights methodology. That sustainable revenue was not only one of the largest gross totals in the ranking; it was also among the fastest growing, registering 123.5% growth since 2022. (All figures in U.S. dollars.)

The environmental impact of data centres populated with millions of these chips is increasingly well understood. One study in December reported that current AI infrastructure has roughly the carbon footprint of the city of New York (about 80 billion tons) and that its collective water use is in the range of the global bottled water industry (765 billion litres).

But these figures pale in comparison to the potential future impact. Last September, OpenAI’s Sam Altman issued an internal memo saying the company’s “audacious long-term goal is to build 250 gigawatts of capacity by 2033.” An analysis from Truthdig found that this would put ChatGPT’s energy use on par with India’s 1.5 billion people, which, depending how that energy is sourced, could produce carbon emissions twice that of ExxonMobil, currently one of the largest non-state emitters in the world.

Nvidia is the primary supplier of the chips populating OpenAI’s data centres, and the two companies recently announced a partnership to continue to build out this infrastructure.

The 2026 Global 100 list puts speed in the spotlight

The power sources

There is an irony to all this: the scale of these operations and their environmental impact is almost exclusively a result of the resource efficiency of Nvidia’s chips. Data centre operations for AI would be impossible if they relied on general-purpose servers. It’s the efficiency of Nvidia’s chips that has enabled this “insatiable demand” for computing power. This phenomenon, known as Jevons paradox, has a historical precedent: coal. In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that the more efficiently the industrial revolution’s primary fuel source could be used, the greater the demand grew.

In the United States, it’s estimated that AI data centres could account for as much as 12% of all energy consumption by 2028. Where is that power coming from? A 2025 report from the International Energy Agency found that coal currently accounts for about 30% of electricity generation for AI data centres globally, mostly in China and the United States. Renewables – wind, solar and hydro – account for 27%, and natural gas accounts for 26% (40% in the United States).

Corporate Knights’ Yow points out that Nvidia as a company cannot be held responsible for the power sources of the AI industry, even if its chips do make up much of its infrastructure. “Would we be having this conversation if all the electricity was 100% carbon-free?” he asks. “The problem is not with the product but rather with the lack of planning and faster deployment of renewable energy.”

Because of the outsized electrical needs, AI companies are exploring options for generating their own on-site power. Altman has, for example, personally invested in a start-up developing nuclear fusion, the holy grail of renewable power generation, and his company has joined the likes of Google, Microsoft and Amazon to invest in small modular nuclear reactor technology. Nevertheless, the most common on-site power sources at present are fossil fuels. At OpenAI’s Stargate facility under construction in West Texas, one of the largest in the world, they are currently deploying dozens of turbines adapted from aircraft engines.

That data centre is populated with Nvidia chips and operated by OpenAI and Oracle. Though the majority of Nvidia chips are not in Nvidia-owned or -operated data centres, the company reported that all offices and data centres under its control are powered exclusively by renewable energy and that it purchases additional carbon-free electricity to cover 100% of the footprint of its leased data centres.

The optimistic outlook

Nvidia has taken measures to address the water consumption at its own data centres, which use it to cool overheating servers. In its 2025 annual sustainability report, the company said it conducts annual water-risk assessments near all its facilities. Its sites in Santa Clara, California, and Hyderabad, India, have water treatment facilities so wastewater can be used for landscape irrigation. The company is also introducing closed-loop liquid cooling systems to reduce water use, and the Blackwell computing architecture – the successor to the Grace Hopper chips – is 300 times more water efficient than air-cooled architecture. (This does not address water use during manufacturing, however, which relies on ultra-pure jets of water to etch the silicone wafers, becoming contaminated in the process. Nor does it pertain to the data centres Nvidia does not control or operate.) A Nvidia spokesperson declined to participate in this story beyond referencing existing company communications.

Those bullish on the prospect of an AI-optimized future will argue that the environmental impact of AI itself will be dwarfed by the efficiencies the expansion of these systems will allow. On one blog, Nvidia cited reports looking at projected U.S. energy demand into 2035. If AI applications are “fully realized,” estimates suggest it could save nearly 2,500 petajoules of energy – about 25% of the entire country’s energy use in 2023.

Such savings would be transformative, and there is a much wider range of environmental applications that AI might come to revolutionize: wildfire detection and management, global climate simulations and extreme weather modelling, electrical grid applications to manage fires and outages, wildlife population tracking, materials science for cleantech applications, and other conservation or carbon-reduction efforts.

To date, the economy-altering value of these companies has been largely measured against their future potential, even as the imminent costs of doing business continue to mount. The environmental balance sheet isn’t so different.

Tristan Bronca is a magazine writer and editor based in Newmarket, Ontario.

The post There’s a paradox at the heart of Nvidia’s sustainability performance appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“The Clean200 follows revenues, not rhetoric,” Toby Heaps, CEO of Corporate Knights and report co-author, said in a statement. “Even when politics turns hostile, markets continue to reward companies that are supplying what the global economy is structurally demanding – clean power, electrification, efficiency, and resilient infrastructure.”

For the 200 companies that made this year’s list, revenue from sustainable activities reached a record high of US$2.8 trillion, up 12% from last year and 710% from 2017. On average, more than half the revenue (53.7%) at Clean200 companies is sustainable – roughly 15 percentage points higher than five years ago – whereas companies in the MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI) generate only 16.7% of their revenue from sustainable activities.

“In 2016, we created the Clean200 in response to investors who asked, ‘As we shift away from fossil fuels, what should we invest in?’” Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow and report co-author, said in a statement. “A decade later, the Clean200 continues to demonstrate that the global economy is increasingly driven by companies delivering solutions that reduce dependence on fossil fuels and resource-intensive systems.”

Over the past decade, investors in Clean200 companies beat the benchmark by a wide margin. From July 1, 2016, to January 26, 2026, the Clean200 portfolio returned 282.9%, compared with 221.3% for the MSCI ACWI. The fossil fuel benchmark, meanwhile, returned a much slimmer 111%. In other words, the Clean200 produced about 2.5 times the gain of the fossil fuel benchmark.

The Clean200 is selected from 8,229 eligible companies, of which 103 were excluded. The list employs a wide range of negative screens to exclude: for example, fossil-fired utilities or big banks and insurers financing fossil fuel companies, as well as for-profit prisons, weapons makers and others.

Looking back five years, the Clean200 demonstrates the increasing economic weight of all-in sustainability firms known as “pure plays,” such as electric-vehicle makers and renewable-power generators. Since 2021, the share of pure-play sustainability companies – those for whom more than 99% of revenues are sustainable – has increased by 175%, from eight to 22. Near pure-plays, or those with greater than a 90% ratio, increased 216.7%, from 12 to 38. And those with more than 80% sustainable revenue also increased dramatically, from 22 to 49.

The United States and China have 69 companies on the list between them, 41 and 28 respectively. Five years ago, the United States had 46 companies on the list, and China had 17, which suggests a subtle but marked rebalancing trend. About half the list consists of “middle power” countries: Japan (15), France (12), Canada (11), Germany (11), Spain (8), Brazil (8), South Korea (7), Denmark (7), United Kingdom (5), Sweden (5) and India (5). Sixteen other countries share the remaining 14.5% of the list, underscoring how widely distributed the clean‑economy opportunity has become.

The post Clean200 companies hit $2.8 trillion in sustainable revenues appeared first on Corporate Knights.