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100 Most Sustainable Companies Named at Davos

The World Economic Forum, which concluded on Friday, was the launch site of a new global business ranking: the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World. Read More

The World Economic Forum, which concluded on Friday, was the launch site of a new global business ranking: the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World.

Among the winners is U.K.-based BP PLC, the world’s second largest oil and gas company, which owns a cutting edge solar power business and is introducing lower-emissions fuels such as natural gas at its retail outlets. BP has also invested in renewable energy technology (fuel cells, wind energy, and photovoltaic) and entered cross-industry R&D sustainability partnerships.

Another winner is Japan’s Toyota Motor, one of the world’s leading automakers, recognized for developing and successfully commercializing the marquee environmental technology of the decade for the auto industry: the hybrid-drive vehicle. Toyota’s hybrid Prius model was the fasting selling car in the United States in 2004.

U.S.-based Alcoa also made the list. As the world’s leading primary aluminum producer, Alcoa is on track to reaping $100-million worth of environmental and energy cost-savings. The company is also poised to benefit from the auto industry’s adoption of aluminum, with its excellent strength-to-weight ratio that helps create fuel efficient vehicles that produce lower tailpipe emissions.

The Top 100 companies emerged from a pool of over 2,000 firms, representing such large global indices as the S&P 500, MSCI World, FTSE 350 and Eurostoxx. Companies were selected on their ability to manage strategic opportunities in new environmental and social markets.

The final list was based on ratings by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors. The ranking is the result of the sector-weighted top-of-class Innovest sustainability ratings from this universe.

The top three companies are singled out for having the highest overall Innovest scores and ratings. What makes these three companies stand out is their ability to manage strategic profit opportunities, that is, their ability to profit from recognizing new environmental and social markets.

“All companies may be created equal but not all are the same. The Global 100 sets out in one crisp list the best all-round global companies, trailblazers that are potential allies in helping to create a better world,” said Toby Heaps, Editor of Corporate Knights, a Toronto-based media company that produces the world’s only mainstream magazine focusing on corporate social responsibility in which the Global 100 list will appear annually.

Companies were rated on such criteria as strategic governance, environmental initiatives, and human capital/labour relations practices. Research and analysis was conducted by Innovest, a leading environmental investment advisory firm with offices in New York, London and Toronto.

“How companies perform on environmental, social, and strategic governance issues is having a rapidly-growing impact on their competitiveness, profitability, and share price performance,” said Dr. Matthew Kiernan, founder and CEO of Innovest Strategic Value Advisors. “We at Innovest congratulate the Top 100 sustainability companies; we consider each of them to be particularly well-positioned to capture opportunities in this new world we are all entering.”

For a complete listing of companies by country, please visit: www.global100.org.

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