However Chinese companies are heavily represented with 66 total companies due to the explosive growth of solar power in China — aided in large measure by aggressive government policies — contributed considerably to the impressive returns recorded by the Clean 200 list.
There is a common perception in the financial community that companies who focus on being socially responsible are should be commended for their activism but avoided by investors. Carbon Clean 200 wants to dispel that notion. In fact, by its analysis, companies that rank high on its list outperform those that don’t by a factor of three to one.
The Clean 200 is a new list created by Corporate Knights and As You Sow, two organizations that advocate for increased social awareness in corporate boardrooms. Together, they decided to look at “which companies currently are profiting from making the decision to participate in the clean transition and what is the best way to spot them? To answer these questions we decided to rely on the Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) database. We wanted to make our analysis simple to understand and to look at stable companies rather than startups, so we started wit a pool of global companies that have at least a $1bn market cap and have at least 10% “Clean Energy Revenue” as defined by BNEF.
Toyota topped the Clean 200 list, followed closely by Siemens. Other well known companies near the top were Schneider Electric (4), Panasonic (5), Vestas Wind (7), Philips Lighting (8), DONG Energy (11), Tesla Motors (17), Gamesa (18), First Solar (19) and Samsung (23).
The Clean 200 will be updated annually. “Our intention with the Clean200 is to begin a conversation that defines what companies will be part of the clean energy future,” says Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow and the report’s co-author. “The Clean200 turns the ‘carbon bubble’ inside out. The list is far from perfect, but begins to show how it’s possible to accelerate and capitalize on the greatest energy transition since the industrial revolution.”
Source: The Guardian. Graphic credit: Clean 200. Hat tip to Leif Hansen who actually alerted me to the Clean 200 report even before the story in The Guardian was published.