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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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Corporate Knights trained its lens on a wide universe of corporations to produce its first-ever Latin America–specific ranking. Using the Global 100 benchmarks of sustainable-economy performance indicators, it assessed 55 companies based in the region with more than US$1 billion in annual revenue.

Corporate Knights’ director of rankings Michael Yow said Brazilian companies are more forthcoming than other companies in the region with their disclosure, which helps explain why so many made the top 10 list.

1. Alupar Investimento

One of the largest energy companies in Brazil, Alupar’s transmission lines extend across Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Peru and generate roughly 800 megawatts from power plants it operates. The company has adopted various policies that bolster its environmental bona fides, such as “replacement and recovery of native forest vegetation” and “maintenance of biodiversity of fauna and flora” in areas where Alupar has lines or power plants. Alupar also “conducts periodic assessments of water quality downstream and upstream” of its assets and offers certified carbon credits for buyers of emissions offsets.

2. Neoenergia

Wind is a key component of energy production in Brazil, accounting for 20% of the country’s needs. Neoenergia, which provides electricity to some 37 million Brazilians, has leaned into the renewable resource, with 44 wind farms across seven states. In 2023, it launched its first wind and solar hybrid project, capable of producing up to 600 megawatts in the northeastern state of Paraíba – enough to power more than one million homes. Also, the Neoenergía Institute develops community-based programs that include funding environmental research and cultural activities.

3. Energisa

Brazilian electricity company Energisa is actively decarbonizing its operations and putting its energy transition in practice. The company claims to have avoided the production of 539,000 tons of carbon dioxide in 2024 by closing diesel- and oil-fuelled thermal power plants in the Amazon region. The company has contributed to the restoration of Usina Maurício Reserve, a 300-hectare private reserve in the Minas Gerais state, with tree planting.

4. Enel Américas

Based in Chile but belonging to Italy’s Enel Group, Enel Américas is one of Latin America’s main energy producers and distributors. In 2023/2024, the company increased its renewable-energy capacity to 12,600 megawatts – around 98% of its portfolio. In 2023, the company reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by around one-third compared to the previous year thanks to more renewable-energy production and less fossil fuel generation. Enel also subscribes to a biodiversity policy of “no net loss,” with a mandate that aims to avoid having a negative impact on the environment where the company operates.

5. CEMIG

Brazilian CEMIG operates around 5,000 kilometres of transmission lines across the country and a massive distribution network spanning more than 500,000 kilometres of lines, mostly in the state of Minas Gerais. It generates electricity through dozens of power stations, mainly hydroelectric but also wind and solar. CEMIG has significantly increased its internal use of renewable energy and decreased non-renewables over recent years. It has pledged to cut non‑renewable energy consumption by 40% by 2027 while increasing the share of renewables in its own energy use.

6. Engie

Engie’s gas network is Brazil’s largest, crossing about 4,600 kilometres of territory, but almost 100% of the energy the company generates itself comes from renewable sources like wind, hydro and solar. The company has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 41% since 2017 and also reduced its waste generation and water use. The company touts multiple sustainability awards, including placing 21st on the 2025 Corporate Knights Global 100 ranking.

7. Sabesp

The Company of Basic Sanitation of the State of São Paulo (Sabesp) provides comprehensive sanitation services, including drinking water supply, sewerage and final disposal of wastewater for nearly 30 million people. Last year, Sabesp took part in IntegraTietê, a sanitation program centred in São Paulo city’s Tietê River. Among some 50 initiatives is its Partners for Impact program, which includes environmental management policies around waste and emissions, along with inclusion and social development with communities, such as job creation and education partnerships.

8. Telefônica Brasil

Through its subsidiary Vivo, Brazil’s largest telecommunications company has launched a long‑term forest‑restoration project in the Amazon that will, over 30 years, restore and protect about 800 hectares of degraded land, with the planting, regeneration and conservation of more than 900,000 native trees in one of the most deforested areas of the forest. The company uses 100% renewable energy in its operations and has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2035.

9. Paranaense Energy Company

Brazilian Paranaense Energy Company (Copel) is the main electricity distributor in Paraná state and operates in nine other states in Brazil. It was the first Brazilian electricity company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, in 1997. Copel has committed to reaching carbon neutrality among its Scope 1 emissions by 2030 and, after divesting from coal‑ and oil‑fired thermal plants, now generates 100% of its electricity from renewable sources, mostly hydroelectric power. It has tapped into Paraná’s major chicken-producing industry with pioneering biogas projects that repurpose poultry waste into electricity, and others that convert biogas into renewable hydrogen.

10. Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (SQM)

Chilean Chemical and Mining Society is a major producer of lithium, potassium nitrate, iodine and industrial chemicals, with most of its resources and plants in the northern Atacama Desert in northern Chile, a region rich in minerals. In early 2026, it entered into a major partnership with Ivanhoe Electric for a copper exploration project. The company has come under significant scrutiny for its water usage in a highly arid region, in particular from local Indigenous communities and environmental groups. The company says it is committed to responsible practices and in 2024 invested US$33 million in areas such as environmental evaluations, environmental monitoring and mitigation measures, industrial waste management, and hazardous substance management. That year, according to its last report, the company did not receive fines or sanctions from environmental law enforcement.

Latin America Top 10 Ranking

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Corporate Knights’ annual Global 100 ranking adds more grist to that mill. Of the nine automakers on this year’s list, six are based in China: XPeng (20), Li Auto (29), Nio (30), Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology (43), Seres (63) and Yadea (60), which mainly makes electric two-wheelers. Tesla is a U.S. company, but about half of its production is in China, and BorgWarner, headquartered in Michigan, also has plants in China. A significant number of Western automakers use Chinese batteries in their EVs, too.

But China’s EV market can be hard to parse. In November, The Atlantic published an explosive article contradicting the main narrative around the growth of its industry and purporting that “China’s EV Market Is Imploding.” In the article, Beijing-based writer Michael Schuman points to the pervasive practice of selling zero-mileage “used” cars and claims that the Chinese Communist Party artificially keeps struggling manufacturers afloat.

China, with its cheap electric cars, is teaching Western automakers a lesson, as they build unaffordable, large, luxurious electric models.

– Colin Pratte, transportation researcher, IRIS

In the West, popular perception varies widely, suggesting the distorting effects of online misinformation and a lack of independent data. Chinese cars are thought to be more technologically advanced than their Western counterparts, but their production is considered dirtier than in Europe or North America because of coal-heavy electricity and pollution from upstream processes like mining and mineral processing. But Colin Pratte, a transportation researcher at the Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques in Quebec, suspects that the latter perception is influenced more by racism than reliable data and that steep tariffs on China’s EVs in Canada and the United States reflect pure protectionism, not high ecological standards.

A big lead

China isn’t the only country propping up its automotive sector, argues Thomas Hundal, a Toronto-based automotive journalist: “To some extent, subsidies are offered everywhere, and people exploit them.” That’s a problem that’s not unique to China, or to EVs, he says, adding that pre-registration, or listing new cars as used, has been a practice in Europe for ages.

According to Reuters, the top 10 countries buying China’s EVs are Mexico, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Belgium, Germany, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

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China’s EV industry is more technologically advanced than the West in two main areas, Hundal says. The first is its battery supply chain: “They can produce huge numbers at low cost compared to North America. China is also years ahead of the Western manufacturers in terms of chemistry, with more impressive discharge rates and higher energy density.” China also has a big lead in charging; their stations are substantially more powerful than North America’s, according to Hundal. Broadly, China has been working on its EV market “in a larger and more serious capacity than the West has,” and for longer.

“China, with its cheap electric cars, is teaching Western automakers a lesson, as they build unaffordable, large, luxurious electric models,” Pratte says. China’s small, inexpensive cars compete directly with the big electric SUVs that Western automakers are pushing with the backing of their own governments. If governments really wanted to reduce greenhouse gases by electrifying transportation, they would welcome cheap Chinese EVs with open arms, Pratte says.

Following a pattern

As few as 15 of the 129 Chinese EV brands are predicted to achieve financial viability by 2030, according to the financial advisory firm AlixPartners. Looking at the stiff competition and excess manufacturing capacity in China’s EV sector, Hundal expects to see major upheaval. “If we go back 100 to 120 years, there were thousands of manufacturers in Canada and hundreds in [the United States]; some survived but most didn’t. I expect that to be the sort of trajectory we will see in China,” he says.

The 2026 Global 100 list puts speed in the spotlight

The threat posed by companies like Nio, Li Auto and XPeng is reminiscent of Toyota’s introduction to the West, when it rapidly gained market share by focusing on affordability and fuel efficiency. Western carmakers at the time emphasized size, power and styling, but Toyota’s big challenge pushed them to overhaul their manufacturing processes and improve their quality and durability. Chinese automakers could force a similar overhaul today by exposing weaknesses in the Western firms. However, its disruptive potential must first overcome the nationalist and protectionist tendencies that have long been the hallmarks of the auto industry.

Ophélie Dénommée-Marchand is a Quebec-based independent journalist with a focus on fact-checking and investigation. She’s also an encyclopedist for the Canadian Encyclopedia.

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That strategy seems to have paid off: revenue has grown 45% since 2019, according to Mads Twomey-Madsen, Pandora’s senior vice president of communications and sustainability. In that same period, he says, Pandora has cut emissions by 17% across the board.

“We can grow and become more sustainable at the same time,” he says. Adopting sustainable practices was a natural next step in Pandora becoming “future-proof,” he adds. “It’s not something that we did as a marketing play. We’re quite aware that many consumers are very interested in sustainable options . . . but it’s more something that we did to stand strong as a brand overall.”

Whatever the reason, the moves make Pandora stand out. And they have helped earn it the number two spot in the Corporate Knights Global 100 ranking, all the way up from 48 in 2025.

The fashion industry contributes up to 8% of global emissions, but a minority of brands are committed to incorporating circular processes. According to the 2022 S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment, which surveyed 70 brands in the textile, apparel and luxury goods industry, 44% of brands had at least one circular fashion program in place.

Pandora isn’t alone in its sustainability ethos. Some of the biggest brands in fashion have launched recycling initiatives in recent years. The German athletic apparel giant Puma, for instance, now uses polyester textile waste saved from factory off-cuts, faulty goods and used clothes to make new garments under the brand’s Re:Fibre program. On average, about 25% of Puma’s products contain recycled materials.

The 2026 Global 100 list puts speed in the spotlight

Inditex Corp., the parent company of Zara, aims to use only textiles that have a low environmental impact by 2030. The brand claims to have used 39% recycled fibres in 2024. It is also working to scale up purchases of recycled materials – such as fibre made from cotton-rich textile waste and polyester made from textile waste – through offtake commitments. The brand also has several eco-certifications, including the Recycled Claim Standard.

Kering S.A., the holding company that owns some of the largest luxury brands, including Gucci, also carries a Recycled Claim Standard certification. The company works with Econyl, a brand-name nylon made from waste products, and partners with start-ups such as Worn Again, which has developed the technology to create fabric from non-reusable textiles.

A steep hill to climb

Despite these types of initiatives – several of which are still in their infancy – the overwhelming majority of textile waste ends up in landfills. According to Boston Consulting Group, only 12% of global textile waste is reused, with less than 1% recycled into new fibres. When it comes to jewellery, recycled gold makes up a larger percentage of the overall supply than recycled silver but these metals are still being mined extensively.

Pandora mostly deals with silver, which makes up about 67% of the brand’s product volume. “The world is not very good at recycling silver,” Twomey-Madsen says, adding that the metal often ends up in the landfill through electronic waste.

Pandora’s big bet on sustainability pays off

It took four years for the brand to completely transition into recycled metals. The process required Pandora to convince its suppliers – 40 total – to source recycled metal certified by the Responsible Jewellery Council Chain of Custody standard. The transition will add an additional US$10 million to annual operating costs, which includes investing in new equipment for suppliers to establish a separate recycled-metal process from their non-recycled metals.

That’s a cost of doing sustainable business that Pandora is willing to pay, Twomey-Madsen says. The added benefit, he says, is that Pandora’s suppliers can now offer recycled metals to other brands, too. “It’s available now for other companies that want to do the same. And I think that’s something that you encounter in these circularity changes,” he says. “These value streams aren’t really established yet. So when you go first, you need to invest in making that happen.”

Ayesha Habib is a Vancouver-based journalist who has written for The Globe and Mail, Maisonneuve and Chatelaine.

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Adding insult to injury, Trump has moved to roll back funding for the industry, tried to halt new wind projects (a federal judge later vacated the pause), and delayed $25 billion worth of already-approved offshore wind projects that were set to provide electricity to millions of households. “Windmills,” Trump said in August, “we’re just not going to allow them. They are ruining the country.”

It is in this adverse context that the seven wind companies on Corporate Knights’ Global 100 ranking are operating, and it is worth noting that nearly all continued to grow their wind installations around the world through 2025.

ERG achieves balanced growth

The top-ranked company this year was ERG, an Italian power generator based in Genoa. Founded in 1938, the company bought up oil refineries through the middle of the last century. In the early 2000s, ERG launched a renewables arm, rapidly grew that side of the business, and finally sold off the last of its fossil fuel assets in 2024 to become a “pure play” wind and solar operator. According to its 2024 sustainability report, about 92% of the company’s energy output comes from wind power; the other 8% comes from solar.

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

Despite offloading its oil and gas facilities, ERG’s power output increased about 25% between 2022 and 2024, from 4,460 gigawatt-hours to 5,992. “ERG not only weathered the downside, but they were also able to increase the amount of electricity they generated and sold,” notes Michael Yow, the director of rankings for Corporate Knights. “It’s a pretty impressive management feat.”

ERG has pursued a strategy of regional diversification, building and buying wind assets in nine European countries and in the United States, where it acquired a 75% stake in a 224.4 megawatt wind farm in Iowa and a 92.4 megawatt solar plant in Illinois in 2023.

Before Trump, the United States was a good place to undertake wind projects. The World Wind Energy Association reports that the country added 2.1 gigawatts of wind-power capacity in the first half of 2025, trailing only India and China. The added capacity came mainly from project pipelines secured under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and much of this growth is threatened by policy changes under the Trump administration. Analysis from Wood Mackenzie and the American Clean Power Association (ACP) found that ”regulatory uncertainty drove turbine orders down 50% in the first half of 2025.”

The 2026 Global 100 list puts speed in the spotlight

The unpredictability in the United States has prompted ERG to take a more cautious approach. The company’s strategy now focuses on acquiring working assets with existing power purchase agreements and projects already financed through tax credits. More broadly, ERG describes its growth plan as “value over volume,” concentrating on countries where it already operates and upgrading existing installations with better equipment.

“Since 2021, ERG has nearly doubled its asset portfolio, growing from approximately 2.1 gigawatts to nearly four gigawatts of installed capacity,” CEO Paolo Merli says. “This result was achieved through a balanced mix of organic developments and acquisitions.”

Plenty of runway for growth

Of all the wind companies on the Global 100 list, Ørsted (#9) has been most affected by the difficult market in the United States, where setbacks on U.S. projects forced it to cut about 2,000 jobs, or a quarter of its workforce, and focus on European projects. Wind companies like Ørsted that primarily develop offshore projects have struggled more than onshore wind developers because installing turbines in coastal waters requires a specialized global supply chain that’s more vulnerable to bottlenecks and disruptions. As one of the cheapest ways to produce power, onshore wind is an easier sell, though offshore enjoys its own advantages, like more reliable wind speeds.

There are signs the industry is experiencing a rebound, however. The United Kingdom has recently concluded a record-breaking auction for long-term price contracts for electricity from offshore wind, enabling the construction of 8.4 gigawatts of new capacity. That’s enough to power the equivalent of more than 12 million homes, according to statements by the U.K. government, which also said the agreed prices were 40% lower than the cost of building and operating a new gas power plant. “It’s good to see that we’re back on track, and we’re seeing substantial allocations coming through again, which is what the industry really needed,” says Jonathan Cole, CEO of offshore wind developer Corio Generation.

China has far outpaced other markets in adding wind capacity, installing 51.4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the first half of 2025. Other Asian markets like South Korea, the Philippines and Japan have introduced new frameworks for permitting offshore wind projects. Suzlon Energy, a wind turbine manufacturer based in India, is new to this year’s ranking and took 10th spot. The company reported 74% revenue growth in the last quarter of 2025. On January 27, Suzlon announced it had won a major order from ArcelorMittal for 248.85 megawatts of wind energy to make low-carbon steel at its facilities in India. This is the wind-turbine manufacturer’s fourth such order for decarbonizing steel production over the past 12 months.

Even in the United States, four of the five offshore wind projects that were hit by federal stop-work orders in December have since been unpaused and the efforts to block them overturned in federal courts. So far in 2026, the logic of wind development is proving more durable than last year’s “vibe shift” against renewables.

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

With files by Mark Mann.

The post Offshore wind turns the corner on a turbulent year appeared first on Corporate Knights.

This was the animating spirit of the new methodology behind the Corporate Knights Global 100 ranking. The revised methodology introduces “sustainable revenue momentum” to measure how fast companies are growing their sustainable revenues. This metric now accounts for one-third of a company’s score, with overall sustainable revenues and sustainable investments accounting for the other two-thirds.

“We’re firing a shot across the bow that speed matters,” Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps says.

A change of method

The new momentum metric marks a broader shift in the ranking methodology. Last year, sustainable revenues and investments together accounted for 50% of the score, and the other 50% was scored across 22 common environmental, governance and social performance indicators (KPIs) such as water use, emissions, workplace fatalities, and diversity on the board and among executives.

The change has reordered the deck in a big way. The revenue growth criteria helped Pandora, a popular Danish jewellery manufacturer, shoot up from 48th spot in the 2025 rankings to number two.

The companies in fourth and sixth place – Fluence Energy, the maker of utility-scale battery energy storage systems headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, and the Denver-based healthcare company DaVita Inc. – are both new to the ranking. Seven other U.S. companies joined the G100 this year, bringing the U.S. total to 20, the most of any country. “[It’s] an interesting rebuttal,” Heaps points out, “to the noise that the United States is bailing on the sustainable economy.”

For fairness, some energy companies were granted a temporary act-of-war exemption from the momentum criteria. The provision is necessary, Heaps says, to prevent companies from being penalized for distortions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which drove prices sharply higher in 2022 before they fell again in 2024.

The G100 leader, ERG SpA, an Italian power generation company, rose dramatically from 18 to number one. Even amid the extreme wartime volatility and the sale of all its fossil fuel assets, ERG managed to increase its power output from wind and solar sources by more than 2,000 gigawatt-hours between 2022 and 2024.

Overall, 33 companies from last year’s ranking failed to make this year’s list, and four were no longer eligible either because they went private or their revenues fell under $1 billion, while 37 new companies entered the ranking. Only two companies – Ørsted, the power generator out of Denmark, ranked ninth, and Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp, ranked fifth – retained their positions from last year.

A dramatic departure?

The big changes may seem to signify a dramatic departure, but the designers of the methodology disagree. The rankings retain the same exclusionary screens and flags captured by many of the previous KPIs. For example, companies that register workplace fatalities, fines, et cetera, are penalized or excluded as they were in the past. The ranking also retains quotas for various industries so that manufacturers compete on the same sustainability terms as other manufacturers, banks against banks, wind and solar companies against other renewable-energy providers, and so on.

“What really matters to us is the contribution [these companies] are making to the low-carbon economy,” says Michael Yow, the director of rankings for Corporate Knights. According to Yow, the new streamlined methodology at once simplifies and standardizes reporting while differentiating the rankings from other international lists.

“In terms of performance, the G100 companies are back in top form, beating the benchmark MSCI AWCI index over the past year,” Heaps says, referring to a stock market index of 85% of global investable equities across almost 50 countries. He adds that the G100 underperformed the financial benchmark in recent years because of the Russia/Ukraine war, which led to spikes in oil prices, higher interest rates and increased military spending, improving the fortunes of companies excluded from the G100 list.

Sustainable revenues account for up to 61% of total revenues for ranked companies, versus just 17.3% for all other publicly listed companies. And despite it being a much larger chunk of their business, sustainable revenues for G100 companies are growing on average at double the rate of all their other revenues.

That momentum matters more than ever. The target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C has fallen conclusively out of reach, and the consequences from each additional 10th of a degree of warming are compounding exponentially. At the same time, the race to seize the opportunities from the green transition is heating up. G100 companies see the future and they’re moving toward it – some faster than others.

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

Not applicable: Companies in the CKPG asset management, banks and insurance companies are not scored on the sustainable investment KPI.

N.A.: Companies were not scored on the sustainable revenue momentum KPI because of the absence of 2022 sustainable revenue data. In the case of EU-based CKPG power generation and power transmission and distribution, the sustainable revenue momentum KPI was not applied because of high volatility in electricity prices in 2022 due to the Russia-Ukraine war.

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