Meet the Carbon Clean 200

As You Sow and Corporate Knights have released the Carbon Clean 200 (Clean200), which ranks the largest publicly listed companies worldwide by their total clean energy revenues and shows a simulated annualised return of 21.82% over the past decade. The list will be updated quarterly to serve as the inverse of the Carbon Underground 200, a list of fossil fuel companies being targeted for divestment which generated a 7.84% annualised return over the same time period.

In order to be eligible for a place on the list, a company must have a market capitalisation greater than $1 billion (end of Q2 2016) and earn more than 10% of total revenues from clean energy sources. The list excludes all oil and gas companies and utilities that generate less than 50% of their power from renewable sources, as well as the top 100 coal companies measured by reserves. Over 70 of the companies on the list receive a majority of their revenue from clean energy.

“The Clean200 nearly tripled the performance of its fossil fuel reserve-heavy counterpart over the past 10 years, showing that clean energy companies are providing concrete and measurable rewards to investors,” said Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps. “What’s more, the outstanding performance of this list shows that the notion that investors must sacrifice returns when investing in clean energy is outdated.”

Energy management company Schneider Electric is one such member of the list, ranking in fourth place. The company last year stepped up its sustainable development objectives with the goal of achieving carbon neutrality over the next 15 years, making commitments to the following:

• Measuring the carbon impact of 100% of major client projects.
• Designing 100% of new offerings using the Schneider ecoDesign Way and achieving the company’s Green Premium standard in 75% of its business.
• Avoiding 120,000 tonnes of CO₂ by introducing ‘end of life’ products in line with circular economy principles.
• Helping 50 million people at the base of the economic pyramid to access lighting and communications over the next 10 years through low-carbon solutions.

“Many clean energy investments are profitable now, and we anticipate that over the long term their appeal will only go up as technologies improve and more investors move away from underperforming fossil fuel companies,” said Heaps.

The full list can be viewed at http://www.clean200.org/.