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

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

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

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

How the ranking was made

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

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

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

The top company for 2026

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

The post 10 companies leading Latin America’s energy transition 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.

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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.

Since I was a teenager, this has been my favourite quote. It hits home with the message that everything we do matters, and that, like the butterfly effect, you never know what mighty waves will rise from tiny ripples.

My second favourite quote served as the unofficial slogan for Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign, borrowed from George Bernard Shaw: “Some men see things as they are and ask, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’”

My third: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

These three quotes capture why the Global 100 exists: to amplify the ripples, to show what is possible, and to ensure the sound is heard.

The journey started 25 years ago when I knocked on the door of sustainability research pioneer Michael Jantzi (founder of what became Morningstar Sustainalytics) to see if he would help us produce our first ranking of Canada’s best corporate citizens. He agreed, and as a token of gratitude – after we published the ranking in Canada’s largest business newspaper – I gave him a framed copy with a plaque that read “You measure, we publish, they change.”

In 2005, we launched the Global 100 in partnership with Innovest Strategic Value Advisors (which later became MSCI ESG), founded by the visionary genius Matthew Kiernan. By necessity – and because of the sorry state of disclosure – those early rankings violated almost every tenet of a meaningful benchmark, except one. While they did rely on opaque black-box methodologies measuring supposedly hundreds of indicators, there was a shared purity of intention among our early collaborators: identify the 100 large companies from around the world, across sectors, doing the most to move the needle toward a more sustainable world where people can thrive in tandem with the planet.

By 2010, we brought the research in-house and made the methodology 100% transparent. This became a core tenet of our approach and a litmus test whereby anyone could replicate our results. As Don Lindsay, former CEO of Teck Resources, put it, “We like the Global 100 because it is clear why we are in or out and what we need to do.”

Disclosure limitations initially constrained us to measuring operational aspects of companies like emissions, taxes paid and board diversity. While these things all matter, the vagaries of voluntary disclosure meant we were often penalizing the best reporters, and on a bigger-picture scale we were missing what mattered most: the portion of a company’s core business that actually moves the world in a more sustainable direction.

In 2018, we came up with a rules-based industry-by-industry definition of sustainability and introduced the clean revenue indicator that measured what portion of a company’s revenue was sustainable. This evolved into sustainable revenues, then sustainable investment and aligned compensation.

The 2026 Global 100 list puts speed in the spotlight

This year, after passing 27 red-flag basic exclusionary hurdles (including board diversity and taxes paid), the Global 100 ranking is now 100% based on the portion of a business that makes the world more sustainable. We’re not abandoning operational impact – rather we’re doubling down on a more powerful measure. Much of the operational impact we once struggled to measure is now captured in our publicly available Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy, which clearly defines what is sustainable in each industry and is updated with further texture each year.

For more than two decades, we have stayed the course in our quest to help companies embrace the sustainability revolution. All along the way, we have been guided by three core principles:

1. Pure intention. This is our north star.
2. Focus on what matters most. Less is often more.
3. Radical transparency. This way, others can trust but verify our work.

Guided by our principles, we made the tough decision to let go of roughly 25 key performance indicators to focus on just four metrics: the portion of revenues and investment that are sustainable, how fast sustainable revenues are growing, and what percent of CEO compensation is linked to sustainability.

Since the founding of the Global 100 ranking, we have invested countless hours collecting data on all those different metrics, trying to get the angel in the detail right and defending the indicators in our ranking formula. The decision to simplify and refocus the ranking on our core mission did feel in part like a loss, but it puts us in a better place to weed out noise and tap into the signal to serve our core purpose of highlighting the business beacons for a more sustainable world.

We’re honoured to present this year’s Global 100 companies. These organizations show what kind of world is possible, sending out fast-growing ripples that give us a chance to rise to meet the mighty challenges of our time.

Toby Heaps is co-founder and publisher of Corporate Knights. 

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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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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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While the CEOs and decision-makers that attended the annual World Economic Forum meeting seemed more worried about things other than climate change (the potential for another Donald Trump presidency and artificial intelligence), they were also more excited about the gathering multitrillion-dollar economic opportunity presented by the transition to a low-carbon sustainable economy. Business is better at playing offence than defence, so I think this may be a good thing.

Corporate Knights’ annual Global 100 ranking of the world’s most sustainable corporations turned 20 this year in Davos. And the corporations that make up the Global 100 are proving that companies that set the standard for sustainability excellence can also outperform the market over time. Now is the time to double down.

These companies show that the climate crisis is far from the back burner for many major players in the business world. Maybe it seems like it has been placed on the back burner simply because it’s becoming ingrained in the way we do business. There isn’t only a moral imperative for corporations to work toward a more sustainable planet; there’s a financial one, too. Here are eight ways the sustainable economy is taking over.

1. In 2024, the average Global 100 company earned 51% of its revenue from sustainable solutions in alignment with the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy (which measures corporate contributions to the sustainability transition). That’s three times better than the average large publicly traded company with more than US$1 billion in overall revenue, which earned 16% of its revenue from sustainable sources.

2. When it comes to sustainable investments, it’s the same story. Global 100 companies allocated 55% of their total investments (capital expenditure, research and development, and acquisitions) to sustainable themes, versus 17% for the broader universe of companies analyzed.

3. Financially speaking, the Global 100 index has stood the test of time, outperforming its benchmark over the past two decades. It has posted a 295% total return since its inception in February 2005 to the end of 2023 (versus 278% for the MSCI ACWI).

4. The really good news is that the exponential growth of the sustainable economy is not contained to the Global 100 companies; it is now embedded as a dominant macroeconomic growth trend, with large publicly traded companies growing their sustainable revenues and investments at double the rate of general revenues and investments over the past three years. A look inside the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Intelligence Database shows that sustainable capital expenditures grew by 56% from 2019 to 2022, compared to 23% for general capital expenditures, while sustainable revenue grew by 84% versus 40% for general revenues over the same period.

5. None of this means we can rest on our laurels. The fossil fuel industry is flush with cash, existentially motivated and ferociously well organized to put up political barriers that delay the inevitable transition to a low-carbon sustainable economy. But fear not: the companies that want swifter climate action in alignment with the Paris Agreement – publicly traded companies signed up to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) – have seven times more economic power (earning US$28 trillion in the most recent fiscal year, according to Corporate Knights calculations) than the US$4 trillion haul made by the fossil fuel industry (itself a huge rise from its recent average of US$1.5 trillion).

6. This economic power must be translated into political power to address barriers to climate action, chief among them unacceptably long permitting times for renewable-energy projects. This is beginning to happen with work led by the Corporate Knights Global 100 Council and others to galvanize the voice of business – not just the green energy companies – as a voice for speeding up climate action. This was demonstrated at COP28 (the first COP agreement to include a renewable-energy target), where business calls spanning all sectors for more clean energy were met with a pledge to triple installed renewable energy to 11,000 gigawatts by 2030.

7. While the fossil fuel industry is more powerful politically, both science and economic power are on the side of companies that want to speed up climate action.

8. While much climate action discussion is devoted to absolute net-zero goals decades away, which can raise hackles and unnecessary existential questions, the current imperative is to focus on speeding up action here and now.

Corporate Knights is here to help organize and provide secretariat support for companies that want to speak out together and ensure that their industry associations are part of the program, so we can make 2024 the year of climate action acceleration.

Our skis are pointed in the right direction, and we’re closing in on the summit (with an electric assist).

Toby Heaps is co-founder and publisher of Corporate Knights. 

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