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.

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.

The post Western carmakers face growing pressure from Chinese EVs appeared first on Corporate Knights.

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.

The post These big retail brands are rallying around circular fashion appeared first on Corporate Knights.

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.

The post The 2026 Global 100 list puts speed in the spotlight appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Since 2005, the Global 100 has been one of the world’s most valued and transparent rules-based sustainability ratings that emphasizes the impact of a company’s core products and services. It is the best-performing global sustainability index (ticker: CKG100), with more than 10 years of history. All publicly traded companies with more than US$1 billion in revenue are assessed across three sustainable economy key performance indicators, including percentage of sustainable revenue and percentage of sustainable investment. Companies engaging in “red flag” activities such as thermal coal, blocking climate policy and deforestation are disqualified. Our methodology illuminates the “say–do” gap. Only those companies making sustainable solutions a core part of their business offerings and allocating meaningful investments to reduce their carbon footprints make the grade. 

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