As You Sow and Corporate Knights today released their sixth update of the Carbon Clean 200™, a list of the 200 publicly traded companies that are leading the way among their global peers to a clean energy future. 

Key findings include:

  • Clean200 has outperformed its fossil fuel counterpart, the MSCI ACWI Energy Index, by a factor of four since launching in July 2016.

  • The top 10 Clean200 companies, based on the amount of absolute revenue they earned from low-carbon products and services, include: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd, Alphabet Inc, Siemens AG, Toyota Motor Corp, HP Inc, Iberdrola SA, Cisco Systems Inc, Tesla Inc, Schneider Electric SE, and Unilever PLC.

From its inception in July 2016 to January 31, 2020, the Clean200 has outperformed the MSCI ACWI Global Energy Index with a return of 29.58 percent compared to 6.68 percent.

“Given that oil prices rose by 30 percent in the past year, it is surprising that oil company stocks have performed so poorly, suggesting that investors may finally be breaking up with fossil fuels, as capital flows to better growth prospects in clean energy,” said Toby Heaps, CEO of Corporate Knights and report co-author. 

The Clean200 utilizes the Corporate Knights Clean Revenue database which tracks the percent of revenue companies earn from clean economy themes including energy efficiency; green energy; electric vehicles; banks financing low-carbon solutions; real estate companies focused on low-carbon buildings; forestry companies protecting carbon sinks; responsible miners of critical materials for the low-carbon economy; food and apparel companies with products primarily made of raw materials with a significantly lower carbon footprint; and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies that are leading the way on renewable energy while also being best-in-sector according to currently accepted privacy benchmarks.

“In 2016 people were saying, ‘if we divest fossil fuels there is nothing to invest in.’ We created the Clean200 to show investors around the world that the clean energy future is actually the clean energy present,” said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow and report co-author. “Since then, we have been tracking and sharing the emergence of this economic paradigm. Clearly there are a broad spectrum of companies making the transformation that is our greatest hope to control climate change a reality.”

7 Dutch companies on the list

The following 7 companies are listed on the Clean200: