A new ranking of the top 200 companies receiving more than 10 percent of total revenues from clean energy finds that these businesses show a simulated annualized return of 21.82 percent over the past decade.
The top 10 companies are Vestas (wind power), Philips Lighting (LED lighting), Xinjiang Gold-A (wind plants), Tesla Motors (electric vehicles), Gamesa (wind turbines), First Solar (solar modules), GCL-Poly Energy (solar grade polysilicon), China Longyuan-H (wind Farms), Kingspan Group (Insulation and building envelopes) and Acuity Brands (LED lights), according to As You Sow and Corporate Knights, which released the inaugural list.
The Clean200 list ranks the largest publicly listed companies worldwide by their total clean energy revenues as rated by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). To be eligible, a company must have a market capitalization greater than $1 billion (end of Q2 2016) and earn more than 10 percent of total revenues from clean energy sources.
More than 70 of the companies on the list receive a majority of their revenue from clean energy.
The list excludes all oil and gas companies and utilities that generate less than 50 percent of their power from renewable sources, as well as the top 100 coal companies measured by reserves. The list also filters out companies profiting from weapons manufacturing, tropical deforestation, the use of child and/or forced labor, and companies that engage in negative climate lobbying, the authors say.
The list will be updated quarterly.
The report’s authors say the 21.82 percent return was due in large part to exposure to Chinese clean energy companies, which have experienced explosive growth. The returns of the Clean200 ex-China were lower, but still superior to the S&P 1200 global benchmark and Carbon Underground 200.
The Clean200 follows an earlier report showing that for the first time, the world’s 500 largest companies are beginning to grow their businesses and manage their emissions at a rate that follows the global scientific consensus on the risks of climate change.
The Thomson Reuters report, Global 500 Greenhouse Gas Performance 2010-2015: 2016 Report on Trends, says these businesses currently represent about 28 percent of the world’s GDP and collectively emitted 10 percent of global GHG emissions over the last five years.
