Spain’s Solaria tops TIME’s sustainable growth list

Solaria Energía y Medio Ambiente, a Spanish renewable energy firm, has topped TIME’s World’s Best Companies in Sustainable Growth 2025 list, compiled in conjunction with Statista.

Solaria achieved a score of 97.50 in the rankings, which are based on a methodology evaluating both financial and environmental performance.

To qualify for inclusion in the ranking, firms need to outperform industry peers in revenue growth and profitability, while also demonstrating leadership in environmental impact, including low Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, efficient water use, minimal waste, and significant reliance on green energy.

This results in a list which contains ‘hundreds of companies you may have never heard of’, according to TIME.

Mid-size firms

U.S. firms comprise 117 of the 500 companies, with many entries representing mid-size firms earning between $1 billion and $10 billion annually. Prominent names like Mastercard (ranked 10th) and Visa (ranked 12th) are exceptions among otherwise smaller-scale innovators.

Giants such as BMW and Coca-Cola, for example, are present, but located well down the rankings, in 253rd and 325th places respectively.

“People are deeply stuck in this trade-off mentality: growth versus green, jobs versus the environment. These are false dichotomies,” John Sterman, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, is quoted as saying in the report.

Best of the rest

Another Spanish renewables firm, Grenergy Renovables, ranks second with a score of 94.57, followed by South Korea’s JYP Entertainment in third, with 93.66.

Intuit, the parent company of Mailchimp, places fourth, with a score of 92.80, followed by UK social services firm Beazley (92.44). Odontoprev and AES Brasil, both from Brazil, place sixth and seventh, respectively, while the remainder of the top ten is comprised of Mavi, Arezzo&Co and Mastercard.

According to TIME, the rankings indicate that ‘more and more leaders are recognising the business case for embedding sustainability to help power growth and profits’. You can view the full rankings here.