The Rise of Energy Firms in TIME’s 2026 Most Impactful Companies List
Key Highlights
- Sunrun leads the energy sector, with over one million residential solar customers, promoting self-sufficient and resilient energy systems.
- The rise of distributed energy resources enables homeowners to generate, store, and export energy, reducing outages and optimizing utility rates.
- Major players like Tesla, Sungrow, and Verbund are innovating in EV batteries, solar inverters, and water management, shaping the future of sustainable energy.
Aside from people and the gifts they bring to the proverbial table, the biggest driver of economic growth is energy. The foundational ingredients of modern lifestyle and job enhancement are power and electricity.
For instance there are no low-energy rich countries. At the same time, the energy-rich nations flourish but must plan for future growth and sustainability.
It’s hardly debatable, and TIME’s new list of most impactful companies in the world certainly makes that point more obvious.
The news magazine’s website’s recent Most Impactful Companies of 2026 list includes four energy-focused firms in the top 10 and seven in the top 20. Residential solar developer Sunrun led all energy firms in TIME’s list at No. 5 after drug and biotechnology firms took the top four spots.
The TIME work, done in partnership with Statista, aims at companies which balance corporate goals and global sustainability needs.
The rise of distributed energy resources is a clear mover for the top companies list. Sunrun has developed and installed residential solar for more than one million customers, while those subscribers are becoming more self-sufficient energy “prosumers” by packaging PV panels with battery storage.
“This allows homeowners to “generate their energy, store their energy, and use it to make sure that they have no outages in their home, to make sure that they're maximizing any kind of complex utility rates,” Sunrun CEO Mary Powell said as quoted in the TIME article. “But then we also take that energy and export it back to the grid.”
China-based Sungrow, which produces inverters and also packages solar and storage, was ranked No. 7 on the TIME Most Impactful Companies list. EV and battery storage manufacturer Tesla was sixth, Austrian utility Verbund ranked 10th, clean energy investor Brookfield Renewable Partners was 12th, battery maker LG Energy Solution at 14th and French energy services and water management firm Veolia was ranked at 17th.
Other energy developers further down the list included SMA Solar Technology at 21st, Meridian Energy at 25th, Kyushu Electric Power at 29th,, SolarEdge 34th, Chubu Electric Power 35th, European Energy 45th and Northland Power 48th.
Fourteen energy technology firms were ranked among the top 50 of TIME’s Most Impact Company list. TIME partnered with research firm Statista on creating the first edition of the list.
The focus is on companies which work to align with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
About the Author
Rod Walton, EnergyTech Managing Editor
Managing Editor
For EnergyTech editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].
Rod Walton has spent 17 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. He formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.
Walton earned his Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. His career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World.
EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
He was named Managing Editor for Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech starting July 1, 2023
Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.