Fifty-five years ago, the first Earth Day started as a grassroots, activist effort to raise awareness about air pollution, toxic drinking water and the effects of pesticides. On April 22, Earth Day 2025 brings with it some good news for the planet as a growing number of large companies disclose their carbon emissions.

More U.S. corporate climate change impact data led to a significant increase in companies listed in the 2025 America’s Climate Leaders ranking.

The effort, released this year for Earth Day, is a three-year collaboration between USA TODAY and market research firm Statista. It uses public data to rank companies doing the most to reduce their carbon footprint. The listing is one of few tools available to climate-conscious readers who want to learn more about which companies are successfully lowering their emissions.

Plans to roll out a federal tool with a similar aim have been halted under the Trump administration, making this year’s rankings an even more important resource.

“It’s well-documented that there’s a huge growth in investor preference for green companies. Of course not all investor or consumers are, but interest and awareness is growing,” said Shawn Kim, a professor at Hass School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies green investing.

For 2025, the total number of companies for which emissions data was obtained increased from approximately 750 in the previous year to around 900 in the current year, representing a 25% growth.

To make the list of America’s Climate Leaders, companies must have reduced their carbon intensity (carbon emissions divided by revenue) by 3% year-to-year. For 2025, 500 U.S. companies are included. In 2024 the number was 450 and in 2023 it was 400.

It’s a simple case of how to best make money

American businesses are forging ahead with efforts to combat climate change, in part driven by powerful financial reasons: decreased costs, increased efficiency, lower insurance rates, productivity growth, employee retention ‒ and it can help entice customers and investors too.

“Companies face strong economic pressure to reduce carbon emissions and account for climate risk,” said Michael Vandenbergh, a law professor at Vanderbilt University who studies private environmental governance.

“It comes from the need to attract customers, employees, corporate buyers, investment dollars, lender dollars and insurers,” he said.

Global warming remains a real and significant long-term threat to companies and businesses globally. It is something many companies are increasingly responding to, both with efforts to lower their greenhouse gas emissions (the driver of climate change) and to harden their enterprise against its effects.

Much of this work is done out of economic self-interest. A survey of more than 60% of chief financial officers by global management firm Kearney in December found they intended to invest at least 2% of their revenue in sustainability in 2025.

The executives saw clear financial reasons because many of these efforts produce lower energy and input costs.

“When companies study their carbon footprint, they often find efficiencies that can help them save money, because often their emissions are the product of inefficiencies in the way they use fuel and other resources,” said Vandenbergh, who is part of Vanderbilt’s Private Climate Governance Lab, which studies these efforts.

Businesses find that even as the federal government moves to eliminate climate rules, they still face pressure from their customers, investors, employees, local communities, lenders, insurers, global trading partners and many states to pay attention to their emissions, Vandenbergh said.

In past years, many U.S. companies made public commitments to lower their carbon dioxide emissions and touted their climate-friendly efforts as part of their overall brand identity.

In a phenomenon dubbed “green hushing,” even as some companies continue climate efforts they are backing away from public pronouncements about their work, especially amid the Trump administration’s rapid reshaping of federal science and climate priorities.

This information is helpful to consumers and investors for several reasons. Some want to support companies making climate-friendly strides in their business.

Others realize there is a cost to companies that do not take climate change into account. While the U.S. government may be turning against climate efforts, the rest of the world isn’t – and those countries represent customers and potential investors.

Research also shows that companies undertake climate initiatives not just because of federal policy. One study found that historically, companies that do a better job with corporate governance, environmental concerns and social issues, known as ESG, tend to have lowers costs capital and financing costs.

Another, by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that even if their only motivation was increasing profits, companies have incentives to invest in green energy innovation that reduces their carbon footprints.

More companies make their carbon emission data available

There is currently no U.S. financial requirement that companies disclose their emissions.

In 2024, after two years of effort, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission passed rules requiring some public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks. They were immediately challenged in court. In March, the proposed rule was withdrawn.

Efforts at the state level have also been slowed or stopped in the courts.

Despite that, a growing number of companies do so voluntarily because the information gives them a leg up in the business world. The main organization that tracks climate reporting is CDP, an investment-minded international nonprofit that provides an environmental impact disclosure system.

Originally known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, more than 24,000 international companies took part in its 2024 disclosure. In the United States, 4,683 companies took part.

How do companies make it onto USA TODAY’s America’s Climate Leader’s list?

The first list, developed in 2023, began with 2,000 U.S.-based companies that fit the overall criteria of having more than $50 million in revenue and reporting their carbon emissions independently. Those were narrowed to 400 that cut their emissions intensity from 2019 to 2021. It is based partly on CDP data together with information gathered by Statista.

For 2024, the list was expanded to 450 companies and looked at their emissions between 2020 and 2022. For 2025, the list was expanded to 500 companies and investigates emissions between 2021 and 2023.

The ranking uses these and other indicators to gain a picture of how good a job companies have done at lowering their carbon emissions.

“Carbon emission intensity is the most widely accepted measure of a firm’s environment performance, so having that information accessible and available to everyday consumers in a easy-to-understand form can be very helpful,” Kim said.

This year’s analysis compares companies’ core emissions adjusted by revenue. This measure is called emission intensity.

“We selected emission intensity (measured as CO2 equivalents per million dollars of revenue) as the key metric because it is less susceptible to fluctuations in economic performance,” said Lisa Abels, a senior analyst with Statista who worked on the list.

“The goal is for companies to reduce emissions through operational efficiency and decarbonization efforts – not due to declining business activity, which would artificially lower absolute emissions,” she said.

Overall, U.S. emissions numbers across the board were diminishing between 2019 and 2021, with the number of million metric tons of carbon dioxide released by the United States down 6.6%. Much of that decrease came because U.S. electricity is getting cleaner.

In 2022 U.S. greenhouse gas emissions ticked up 1% compared with 2021, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Which companies ranked highest as America’s Climate Leaders?

For the second year in a row, Dayforce, a human resources and software company based in Minnesota, was at the top of the Climate Leaders list

By switching to 100% renewable energy across their global operations, they reduced their greenhouse gas emissions from around 8,000 metric tons CO2 equivalents in 2021 to less than 300 metric tons CO2 equivalents in 2023.

It is followed by Zillow Group, a real estate site, and Aramark, a food service and facilities management company.

How are companies chosen?

The rankings began with a list of more than 2,000 U.S.-based companies with revenue of more than $50 million in 2023. Using sustainability reports and annual reports, Statista complied their greenhouse gas emission reports and revenues for 2021 and 2023.

Companies whose absolute emissions increased by more than 50% between 2021 and 2023 were eliminated from the list.

Here are some of the data and considerations used in the rankings: 

• Emission intensity: The amount of greenhouse gas a company produced relative to its revenue. This helps put big companies and small companies on a level playing field. 
• Annualized reductions in emission intensity: Calculated between 2021 and 2023. Companies that showed low reductions were not considered. 
• Carbon disclosure rating: A measure of a company’s environmental sustainability. These rankings are administered by CDP, the nonprofit that runs a global disclosure system for companies’ environmental impacts. 
• Other criteria: Some enterprises were excluded if known business practices suggested they couldn’t be seen as a climate leader.  
• Data used: Scope 1 and 2 emissions, based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the world’s most widely used greenhouse gas accounting standard. 

The full, interactive list below allows readers to view a variety of criteria, including year-over-year reduction of emission intensity, emission intensity, how many tons of CO2 equivalents the company emitted, total emissions reduction, and whether a company participated in two highly regarded programs that set targets for and account for emissions, the CDP and Science Based Targets initiative.