If there’s one thing the private sector craves most from government, it’s clear, stable policies. But in the coming year, many businesses will have no such luck as they navigate major changes to the global tax and regulatory environment that has been encouraging investment in more sustainable technologies and practices.

While the new U.S. president will be taking aim at legislation that resulted in nearly US$300 billion in private-sector investments in clean energy, battery manufacturing and clean power generation, most business leaders recognize that concerns about a worsening climate crisis will grow regardless of shifting political winds. The costly impacts of climate change and, more than anything, the declining costs of low-carbon technologies continue to drive investment in solutions.

Corporate Knights’ Global 100 ranking of the world’s most sustainable firms, now in its 21st year, shows that the top firms continue to increase their investment in the green transition. Even with higher interest rates in recent years, leading corporations have expanded their sustainable investments, which has resulted in a growing share of income being derived from sustainable revenue sources.

“We’re finding that growth in sustainable revenues is outpacing all other revenues,” says Toby Heaps, co-founder and CEO of Corporate Knights. “Over the last five years for major global public companies, sustainable revenues are growing twice as fast as other revenues, and they now represent over $5 trillion of annual revenues for the 3,000 biggest companies that we track.”

“With sustainable investment, it’s the same story,” Heaps says. “Sustainable capital expenditure is growing twice as fast as all other capex.” That green investment is key to a more sustainable future, telling us where companies are going as opposed to where they currently derive their revenues.

The firms in the 2025 Global 100 ranking allocated 58% of their investments to sustainable projects in 2023, up from 55% in the prior year. That figure compares with sustainable investments of just 15% for the 8,259 other publicly traded companies with revenues of more than $1 billion in the Global 100 universe.

2025 Global 100

Note: Banks, asset management and insurance peer groups are not assessed on the sustainable investment KPI. The weight of this KPI has been reweighted to the sustainable revenue KPI.

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Bumpy Road

For most of its 20-plus-year history, the Global 100 has outperformed its MSCI ACWI benchmark on total investment return. However, the MSCI ACWI nudged ahead of the Global 100 this year thanks mainly to the updraft in AI stocks, and, to a lesser extent, the rally of oil and weapons stocks, sectors that are not particularly strong on sustainability. This updraft effect, combined with high interest rates that depressed stock prices of firms spending big on transforming their assets (such as those leading the clean energy transition), led to the Global 100 underperforming over the past two years.

That said, the world’s top companies are staying the course, knowing that speed bumps won’t stop progress toward a more sustainable and inclusive economy.

French-based Schneider Electric SE climbed to the top of the 2025 Global 100, up from seventh place last year, thanks to a high level of sustainable investment and revenue, its leading performance on gender diversity, and the low carbon intensity of its production. Like the majority of companies on the Global 100, Schneider isn’t a consumer-facing household name; rather, it provides the nuts, bolts and technology for the green transition, including building energy controls, off-grid solar and EV charging and grid automation (read our top company profile). It also happened to rake in record-breaking revenues in 2024, built on continued demand for energy management.

Last year’s leader, Australian waste management company Sims Ltd., is in second place this year, while Danish wind manufacturer Vestas Wind Systems S/A is in third. Both Sims and Vestas are pure-play companies that derived 100% of their revenue from and allocated 100% of their investment to sustainable projects.

New to the Global 100 ranking for 2025 are Türkiye Sinai Kalkinma Bankasi, a national industrial bank based in Istanbul, and American manufacturer BorgWarner Inc., which produces battery systems, fast chargers and electric motors for mobility applications. Michigan-based BorgWarner’s high growth in sustainable revenue was particularly fuelled by the popularity of EV components, such as its electric powertrains.

Danish jewellery manufacturer Pandora also joined the ranking for the first time as its recycled gold and silver inputs jumped to 97% in 2023, from 61% the previous year.

Canada has 11 companies represented in the Global 100, second only to the United States, which has 15. The Canadian contingent is led by engineering firms Stantec Inc., which aimed 82% of its capital expenditure at sustainable investing in 2023, and WSP Global Inc., which earned 64% of its revenue from sustainable sources that year.

Canadian insurers Sun Life Financial Inc. and Manulife Financial Corp. both earned spots in the Global 100 ranking, as did telecommunications giants BCE Inc., Telus Corp. and Cogeco Communications Inc. (The Corporate Knights ranking allocates spots by sectors to reflect the global economy. For example, 16% go to financial institutions and 7% are reserved for telecoms.)

Green snakes and ladders

Staying on the ranking can be a challenge. The Bank of Montreal had been dropped from the 2024 ranking but regained its place in this year’s version. The bank improved on a number of metrics, notes Matthew Malinsky, director of sustainable economy intelligence for Corporate Knights. BMO saw gains in sustainable revenue, its CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio, racial diversity and its sustainability pay link in which 10.3% of the CEO’s pay is tied to achieving the company’s social and environmental goals. The bank has a rapidly growing green loan book and has provided just under $40 billion in renewable-energy financing since 2019.

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Anglo American is also new to the ranking, bumping off Canada’s Teck Resources (which had been on the list for six straight years) as a result of Anglo’s sustainable investment growth of 19% and increases in sustainable revenues from mines tied to low-carbon-economy minerals such as copper and nickel.

Brookfield Renewable Partners also dropped from the ranking, despite its strength in sustainable investing and revenues. Brookfield was red-flagged by the non-profit shareholder advocacy group As You Sow over its investments in Westinghouse Electric Company, which manufactures rods that produce tritium used for nuclear weapons.

2025 Global 100 vs. the rest

Indicator	2025 G100	2024 G100	2025 average*	2024 average
Sustainable revenue (% total revenue)	53%	51%	15%	16%
Sustainable investment (% total investment)	58%	55%	15%	17%
Executive gender diversity	25%	24%	18%	19%
Board gender diversity	36%	35%	25%	25%
Executive racial diversity	10%	11%	10%	8%
Board racial diversity	12%	14%	12%	10%
Cash taxes paid (% of profits)	14%	14%	9%	14%
Carbon productivity ($ sales/tonnes GHGs)1	$1,305,869	$927,244	$640,248	$491,909
Energy productivity ($ sales/GJ energy used)2	$95,316	$479,161	$93,071	$160,630
Sustainability pay link	80/100	64/81	2830/8062	1882 / 6330
CEO–average worker pay ratio	79:1	85:1	60:1	74:1

* Large publicly traded companies (with more than PPP$1 billion in annual revenue), excluding the Global 100.

1 – For comparison purposes, the scope 2 portion of the Carbon Productivity numbers in this chart are calculated according to a market-based methodology. Please note that in prior year publications, scope 2 emissions were calculated using a location-based methodology

2 – Companies that have no net non-renewable energy use do not receive an energy productivity value but receive a 100% energy productivity score.

Room for improvement

There are areas where all Global 100 firms can improve. The top firms may be leaders in pursuing gender diversity on their boards, but only a handful (Autodesk, SMA Solar and Taiwan Cooperative Financial Holding Co Ltd) have reached gender parity at the executive level. And Global 100 companies perform no better in terms of racial diversity than the broader universe of large publicly traded companies.

The road to decarbonization and a more inclusive economy will become bumpier in the coming years given the current political backlash. However, corporate sustainability leaders appear to be committed to progressing down that path, as evidenced by more than two decades of the Global 100 rankings. 

Shawn McCarthy is an Ottawa-based writer.

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Methodology

The Global 100 methodology uses a mix of fixed and variable-weight ESG and sustainable-economy key performance indicators (KPIs) to score companies against their peers. We measure the share of revenues and investments that are included in the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy and percent rank those ratios against the company’s peer group (CKPG). We then give equal weight to the ratios and the percent ranks in awarding up to 25 points for sustainable revenue and up to 25 points for sustainable investment, for a total of 50 possible points.

The other 50 points in the Global 100 are allocated to 22 ESG KPIs, covering environmental, social, governance and supplier sustainability themes.

In addition, penalties can be levied against overall scores for low performance on the following indicators: productivities for water, waste, VOC, NOx, SOx and PM; cash taxes paid; injury rate; and fatalities. Up to five points are deducted for companies that have been levied fines above a percentage threshold of their revenue compared to other companies. Lastly, the political influence KPI may earn a company 2.5 bonus points.

After analyzing data for 25 KPIs, using the Corporate Knights methodology, this year’s overall scores were converted to letter grades.

Awarded to the top company​

Above 75%

70% – 75%

65% – 70%

60% – 65%

55% – 60%

50% – 55%

45% – 50%

40% – 45%

35% – 40%

30% – 35%

25% – 30%

To learn more about Corporate Knights research, head to corporateknights.com/research-products.

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Previous Rankings

2024 GLOBAL 100

2023 GLOBAL 100

2022 GLOBAL 100

2021 GLOBAL 100

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While Blum may have just arrived in the CEO role, he’s a well-known commodity within Schneider, having spent more than 30 years at the company. His fingerprints are all over the changes that have led to Schneider being the first company to top the Global 100 more than once (it first earned top spot in 2021).

Blum led Schneider’s first steps in emission reductions and corporate social responsibility (CSR) 20 years ago. At first, sustainability targets were seen as extra initiatives to be achieved while the organization carried on operating in much the same way. “Very quickly we realized this concept of corporate social responsibility living in a separate part of the [company’s] universe didn’t make a lot of sense,” Blum says. 

With revenues of €36 billion in 2023 and offices in more than 100 countries, Schneider Electric’s universe is vast. It manufactures and sells everything from light switches to electrical panels. It’s also a world leader in helping data centres reduce power consumption, as well as offering AI-based solutions for smart energy and building management, software, micro grids, EV charging, water management and energy management – the division that Blum led prior to his appointment as CEO.

A structure that supports diversity

Much of the company’s marketing material extols the benefits of the smart city of the future – where most everything is electrified, renewable generation and consumption are closely managed, and efficiency drives down energy demand. 

But it is on employee diversity where Blum’s enthusiasm really comes through. Rather than having diversity targets separate from the company’s activities, Schneider learned from its CSR experience and changed its entire structure to promote diversity.

Schneider was a traditional French company with a French headquarters and a leadership that was, consequently, largely French. To break out of this mould, the company invented what it calls a “multi-hub model,” says Blum, who led Schneider’s diversity efforts for five years as head of human resources. The company now has three regional hubs, in the United States, Europe and one serving the Middle East and Asia (Blum is based in Schneider’s Dubai office and was previously in France, India, China and Hong Kong).

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The benefits are very clear to Blum. “If you are working in China, you don’t need to go back for a decision to Paris or to the U.S. to move fast and to have an approval. The second benefit is that when you’re 25 years old, you enter Schneider, for instance, in the U.S., in China, in India, now in the Middle East. You look at that and you say, ‘Oh, I can go to the top of the company even staying in my region.’”

‘Whether we like it or we don’t like it’

But a global company also attracts global criticism. Corporate Knights received dozens of  complaint letters in 2023 after announcing that Schneider Electric was once again ranked one of the 100 most sustainable companies. The complaints centred on the use of Schneider’s technology in a pipeline linking Uganda with the Tanzanian coast.

“I always understand that some people can have a different point of view, but we are very at ease with our position on those kinds of projects,” Blum says. “It will take time to move from fossil fuels to renewables; it’s a fact whether we like it or we don’t like it. So we prefer Schneider to be involved in those projects and to help our customers to build pipeline infrastructure” that consumes less energy and therefore emits fewer emissions. 

Roughly 5% of Schneider’s revenues do not meet the EU’s rules on “environmentally sustainable” economic activities or are products with sulfur hexafluoride (used in insulating electrical parts); 74% is considered sustainable.

Despite more pipelines being built, Blum is confident that global momentum for decarbonization is growing at all business levels.

Enduring demand for decarbonization technology

The 2015 Paris Agreement created a big incentive for Schneider to double down on its sustainability focus, but that decision was not echoed in its customer base. Blum reckons that it took three or four years for the enormity of the Paris Agreement to transform into business decisions at many large corporations: “2019 is when we started to see a large number of enterprises taking a lot of interest [in decarbonization]. I was leading strategy and sustainability at that point of time.” 

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Then COVID hit, and rather than impede corporate decarbonization efforts, things started to accelerate – a trend that continues as more climate-reporting obligations in Europe and around the world have spurred even more interest in the last two years. “Many large companies in the world have realized that they have to be part of that story,” Blum says. This has a knock-on effect well beyond the direct emissions of large corporations. “Many of [their suppliers] are small and medium-sized enterprises. And SMEs are seeing that if they want to stay relevant, then for their large customers they also need to have a decarbonization strategy,” he says.

The end result is growing demand for the decarbonization technology that Schneider Electric offers. The company has been tracking all the companies that publicly commit to net-zero with science-based targets, and the list, Blum says, is doubling in size every year.

“Now is a very interesting place because we meet all the largest companies in the world, and all of them put sustainability in their strategy,” he says.

Adrian Hiel is a Canadian writer who has spent the last two decades in Brussels.

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