As experts sound the alarm on increasingly urgent climate warnings, companies are faced with a challenge to conduct business more sustainably, without sacrificing growth. This year, TIME and Statista are publishing the second annual ranking of the World’s Best Companies in Sustainable Growth to identify companies leading their industries by demonstrating both outstanding financial and environmental performance, characterized by small carbon footprint, low water consumption and waste production rates, and high green energy usage.
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Methodology: How TIME and Statista Determined the World’s Best Companies in Sustainable Growth 2026
The top company on this year’s ranking is South Korea-based JYP Entertainment, which discovers, manages, and develops artists like K-pop groups TWICE and Stray Kids. “JYP has continued to drive innovation in the global music industry while maintaining steady growth,” CEO Jung Wook wrote in the company 2024 ESG report. “As part of our efforts, we are pursuing greenhouse gas reduction through our ‘2050 Carbon Neutrality Roadmap’ and proudly became the first company in the domestic entertainment industry to achieve RE100 [100% renewable energy].” Wook said the company is monitoring energy use and efficiency and waste reduction to foster sustainable concert culture, using eco-friendly materials and packaging for merchandise.
Nvidia (no. 6), the fastest growing company in the U.S., has achieved big green goals this year, announcing that all of the offices and data centers it directly operates are run on 100% renewable energy. Innovation is helping Nvidia create GPU chips that are more efficient at powering AI than traditional CPUs—the Blackwell platform is 25x more energy efficient for LLM inference than the Hopper generation. “We are working to reduce emissions wherever we can. For the first time, we published a product carbon footprint summary for a GPU-accelerated server,” CEO Jensen Huang wrote in a 2025 Sustainability report. “We found that manufacturing-related emissions are significantly lower than previously estimated—a testament to the power of AI to optimize products, processes, and supply chains.” Nvidia has also tried to understand its own environmental impacts by tracking the greenhouse gasses emitted throughout life cycles of its products from raw material extraction to production and assembly, and improving the recyclability of its products by creating programs that take in and disassemble older generation chips into components and using recycled bits in new chips.
U.K.-based NatWest Group (no. 17) moved up significantly in rankings since last year, when it was ranked no. 462, and has been a leading bank in climate financing, stating in July 2025 that it would dedicate 200 billion pounds ($263 billion) to help its clients, especially in polluting industries like transport and buildings, meet decarbonization and climate goals. For example, in 2024 it helped Together Housing Group invest in sustainable upgrades to its portfolio of over 38,000 properties. And it’s helped McCain Foods farmers invest in regenerative farming practices like seed for winter cover crops to reduce nitrogen leaching, and worm count studies for soil health. Despite recent scrutiny over NatWest changing the language around concrete climate goals, as spotted by The Independent, compared to its peers it lends the least to oil and gas customers. It also stayed in the Net-Zero Banking Alliance while big banks like Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs began pulling out in late 2024 following President Trump’s election.
Some might be surprised to see Inditex, owner of fast fashion retailer Zara, at no. 88. The company gained 8.3 points and 93 spots over last year’s ranking thanks to its rapid growth, as well as its relatively low scope 1 and 2 emissions (which relate to its direct and purchased energy emissions), water consumption, and waste production compared to its industry.
See the complete list of sustainably growing companies below.