Over the past decade, the company has gone through a major transformation from being the fossil-focused Dong Energy to Ørsted – a global leading developer of wind at sea. Through this fundamental business transformation, Ørsted has paved the way for other companies to join the wave of green revolutions and in a press release CEO, Henrik Poulsen, states:

"We're immensely proud to rank as the world's most sustainable company. From our origins as a traditional fossil fuel-based energy company, we've transformed into one of the largest renewable energy companies in the world. Every day, we deliver green energy solutions at scale to combat climate change, the defining challenge of our time."

Since 2006, Ørsted has reduced its carbon emission from their energy generation and operations by 83% and will be essentially carbon-neutral by 2025. Today, the company’s offshore wind farms supply green power to more than 13 million people, and Ørsted aims to grow this number to 50 million people by 2030.

According to Corporate Knights, the primary reason for ranking Ørsted as best in the sustainability contest this year is that the company has increased its renewable energy revenue by 10% since last year so it now accounts for 68.1%. Moreover, it provides extra points that Ørsted pays taxes and has a high gender diversity on the board. There is also a tendency for Global 100 companies to last longer and deliver higher annual net investment returns than comparable companies in the MSCI All Country World index, Corporate Knights said.

Henrik Poulsen doesn’t stop here. He utilise the award to send out an invitation to all countries and companies to reduce their CO2 emissions.

"We have the necessary green technologies at hand to transform the world's energy systems. Countries and businesses must work together and take bold steps to speed up the green transformation, reduce their emissions and limit global warming to 1.5C. As I see it, we owe it to the current and not least future generations."

Ørsted is already on the next frontier in its decarbonisation journey by launching a new programme for reducing carbon emissions in its supply chain.

"We're strengthening collaboration with our biggest and most important suppliers to work with them on reducing their emissions in line with science and to encourage them to run their operations on green energy,"

says Henrik Poulsen and continues:

"Ørsted has become a sustainable and profitable business by making green energy deployment the keystone of our business strategy. Companies that do not take action now to decarbonise run the risk of seeing their business models come under pressure in the future. We encourage all companies to make decarbonisation a core part of their strategy."

The progress in Ørsted's decarbonisation programme is demonstrated in the company's jumps up the Global 100 ranking: 70th in 2018, 4th in 2019, and 1st in 2020. 

In Denmark, it is not only Ørsted who is fighting climate change. Also other Danish companies are a part of the world elite of most sustainable companies. Bioscience company Chr. Hansen ranks no. 2, Novozymes no. 6 and Vestas no. 37 on the Corporate Knight’s list for 2020.