When we first launched the Clean200 in July 2016, many people considered it a very unlikely prospect that an avowed climate change skeptic could be elected to the highest office in the land.

Welcome to 2025: with President Trump 2.0, we are now in our second round of just such a scenario.

So how on earth have the Clean200 (the biggest companies measured by total sales of sustainable products and services) managed to triple in value over that same period, besting blue-chip benchmarks, and leaving fossil fuel companies in the dust?

The answer is a reminder of why it pays to follow the money instead of being swayed by disinformation.

The bottom line is that the global sustainable clean energy economy is experiencing exponential growth. It is going parabolic because most clean technology options are superior and only getting better.

Corporate Knights data shows that for the large companies that make up 80% of global market capitalization, sustainable revenues and capital expenditures are growing more than twice as fast as everything else over the past five years. This trend holds across sectors and regions and puts the sustainable economy on a path to dominate the global economy by the end of the next decade.

Many people still believe that the primary factors driving demand for green power and electric vehicles are politically driven subsidies, but that is no longer the case. Superior technology and economic logic are now the primary drivers. Green power and EVs have become less expensive, more efficient, and are not reliant on fossil fuel commodities with wild price gyrations. It is now to the point where they simply financially outperform their fossil fuel counterparts – without subsidies. Solar and wind combined with battery power are now less expensive on a kilowatt produced basis than fossil fuels.

Despite all the market imperfections, for every $1 invested in fossil fuels globally, $2 is now invested in clean energy, while electric or hybrid vehicles now account for more than half of new cars sold in China (which happened this year – ten years ahead of schedule).

People bay at the moon for political leadership, but it didn’t seem to matter who was president of the United States the past eight years when it comes to the energy transition. Oil and gas continued to rise under both administrations, yes, but there was no stopping the clean economy, regardless of rhetoric at the top. Clean energy investment surged under Trump and Biden, comprising the bulk of all energy investment under both in each of their last years in office, according to data from Clean Investment Monitor and the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Investment.

Nevertheless, most people think President Trump 2.0 will be a disaster for the climate.

Case in point: his pick for energy secretary, oil wildcatter Chris Wright, said last year, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either.” But what if a different outcome is possible?

To explore this question in a clear-eyed way, two things matter: how much can a president tip the scale on climate solutions, and in which direction will it tip?

Let’s follow the money: the United States accounts for 15% of global investments in climate solutions, so 85% of the action is elsewhere (mostly China).

Also, don’t forget that while the executive branch of the U.S. government can be a powerful bully pulpit, there are other influential actors, including the private sector, state and local governments, and civil society

It’s also worth reviewing Trump 1.0.

Despite Trump’s promises to “bring back coal,” a record 50 coal plants were shuttered during his first term, plus another 51 announcements of closures as the economics of coal plummeted.

In terms of U.S. energy investments, green energy and fossil fuels expanded across the board during Biden’s presidency. However, green energy as a proportion of total energy investments were not that much different than in Trump’s time (55% versus 51% in each of their last years in office).

There are a few important elements to keep in mind when evaluating the potential impact of Trump's presidency on the clean economy.

1. Red tape: 2,500 gigawatts of green energy in the United States is in limbo waiting for grid connection permits, roughly double the entire installed electricity capacity.

2. Interest rates: They represent up to 40% of renewable energy costs when rates are high.

3. Oil prices: When the price of fossil fuels goes up, it increases the earnings, economic clout and political power of oil and gas companies. Higher oil prices being bad for renewables may sound counter intuitive, but keep in mind that charging an electric vehicle is equal to paying $1.60 a gallon, so whether gas is $3 or $4 per gallon, you are still saving a lot with an EV. In other words, if you have less red tape to tangle up green energy projects, lower costs of capital and lower oil prices (so big oil has less cash to tip the political scales), then you get more climate solutions deployed.

And there is a wild card this time: Elon Musk, who recently reiterated his long-standing mission to achieve national and individual energy independence underpinned by a vertically integrated sustainable-energy ecosystem.

Three factors that may work in favor of clean power.

Trump's impact on renewables won't be all negative, for several reasons:

1. Musk’s new role in the White House overseeing a vast deregulation agenda will not be all bad news for the environment. Fossil fuel projects will be green-lit faster, but renewables will benefit too, and we already know they have the cost-competitiveness to be market winners.

2. Trump loves low interest rates (and he is happy to twist the Fed’s arm) because they buoy stock markets (potential inflationary effects of tariffs be damned).

3. Trump’s obsession with cheap gas contributed to cutting the valuation of oil and gas companies in half during his first term, a stark contrast to the 100% increase we saw during Biden’s presidency.

Bottom line for climate action: Trump 2.0 could be an inadvertent net positive on the sway he holds over the world’s march toward a climate solutions economy.

For investors who put more stock in economic logic than hot air, the takeaway is that the right time to go all in on the energy transition was yesterday. The second-best time is now, and that’s true no matter who is president of the United States.

This year’s Clean200 companies rose to the top of a pool of 8,359 global firms based on a rigorous assessment of the amount of revenue each company earns from products and services aligned with the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy. This was achieved while also ensuring that their businesses are not fundamentally offside important criteria for socially responsible investors, including being a company flagged by As You Sow’s Invest Your Values platform, which identifies fossil fuels, deforestation, weapons, private prisons, thermal coal, or having a record of systemically obstructing climate policy.

Key Findings:

Geographically, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and North America account for 34%, 33%, and 26% respectively of this year’s Clean200, while the remaining 7% of companies are headquartered in the Middle East, Africa, and South America. The United States dominated the 2025 list, with 41 companies on the Clean200, while China had the second-largest share with 21, followed by Japan, which is the headquarters of 18 Clean200 companies.

On average, 54.5% of revenues earned by Clean200 companies are classified as sustainable, representing over $2.5 trillion in revenue, significantly above the 15.5% average sustainable revenue for their MSCI ACWI peers.

Of note, it was found that on average, 39.2% of the capital expenditure, acquisitions, and research and development expenses among the Clean200 companies were defined as sustainable by the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy (CK SET), compared to only 19.6% among MSCI ACWI constituents.

Of the companies that made the 2025 Clean200 list, the Information Technology sector accounted for over a quarter of the total sustainable revenue at $687 billion, followed by the Industrials sector ($638 billion) and the Consumer Discretionary sector ($446 billion). On Sustainable Investments, the Consumer Discretionary sector led with $94 billion, followed by the Utilities sector with $81 billion and the Industrials sector with $63 billion of CK SET-aligned investments.

None of this would have legs if the Clean200 weren’t also faring well financially. On this score, as of January 29, 2025, the Clean200 outperformed the MSCI ACWI/Energy Index of fossil fuel companies on Total Return Gross — USD Basis on a sustainable revenue-weighted basis from the Clean200 inception of July 1, 2016, 190.9% against 76.7%.

To put that in context: $10,000 invested in the Clean200 on July 1, 2016, would have grown to $29,090 by Jan. 29, 2025, versus $17,670 for the MSCI ACWI/Energy benchmark for fossil fuel companies.

The Clean 200 also outperformed the MSCI ACWI, which returned 162.0% over the same time period.

Corporate Knights and As You Sow are pleased to present the latest edition of the Clean200 to help investors identify the companies that are leading the charge on providing climate solutions while outperforming both the broad-based benchmark and its high-carbon global counterparts.

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Clean200 vs MSCI ACWI vs MSCI ACWI/Energy
(July 1, 2016–Jan. 29, 2025, Total Return USD Gross)