TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2025: Schneider Electric

Time​ Magazine

2 days ago

For more than 20 years, Schneider Electric has been guided by an ambitious goal: to drive the global energy transition forward through electrification, digitalization and automation. Schneider's products and services support everything from smart energy and building management to industrial automation and EV charging. The France-based multinational supports the sustainability practices of 40% of the Fortune 500. 'We accompany customers from strategy to execution,' says Chief Sustainability Officer Esther Finidori.
One example of what that looks like: Schneider helps its customers buy renewable energy from suppliers, accounting for 60% of such purchasing in the U.S. market. 'It's complicated for corporations today to source renewable energy,' Finidori says. But with its global profile, Schneider says it has helped customers avoid 679 million metric tons of CO2 emissions since 2018—equivalent to taking over 130 million cars off the road for a year.
Today, the company's decarbonization solutions are in 40% of commercial buildings and homes, 50% of hospitals, and 33,000 wastewater facilities around the world. One prominent building example is JFK Airport's New Terminal One in New York City, construction of which began in September. Schneider is providing software and other tech to help build a 12-megawatt microgrid with over 13,000 solar panels—touted as the largest rooftop solar array in New York City and in any U.S. airport terminal. The microgrid will power half of the terminal's daily operations.
Schneider is also helping ensure that the power-hungry data centers proliferating amid the AI boom are energy-efficient. Last year, in collaboration with AI chip giant Nvidia, the company introduced the first publicly available AI data center reference designs. Disseminating those designs is important 'because this is how we'll achieve efficiency and scale while making sure the best practices are widely adopted,' Finidori says.
Schneider is achieving sustainability and efficiency not only for its customers, but in its own operations and the supply chain that supports its $38.8 billion in annual revenue. With 130,000 employees spread across 108 countries, the company's carbon footprint is complex. But Schneider aims to achieve net-zero operations by 2030 and net zero across its value chain by 2050. (During the last five years, it's cut emissions in its entire value chain by about one-fifth.) 'We want to demonstrate it's feasible to decarbonize fast and everywhere by doing it in our own operations first,' Finidori says.
The company—which ranked #1 on TIME's World's Most Sustainable Companies of 2024 and 2025 lists—is on track, Finidori says. From 2021 to 2024, Schneider, which links its sustainability goals to employee pay, more than halved its operational emissions. The winning change strategy is clear: '[E]lectrification of everything—heating, industrial processes, our fleet—as well as sourcing renewable energy,' she says.