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Avangrid, a leading sustainable energy company in the U.S. and member of the Iberdrola Group, today was recognized for the fourth consecutive year on the annual JUST 100—a list of America’s best corporate citizens published by JUST Capital and its media partner CNBC. This year Avangrid earned the top rank among utilities, up from second in 2023, and improved its overall ranking to 12, up from 45 in 2023, for its commitment to serving its workers, customers, communities, the environment, and shareholders.

To receive the number one ranking in the utility industry, Avangrid earned leading scores on key issues, such as human rights, community development, ethical leadership, customer treatment, transparent communication, beneficial products, climate change, workforce advancement, and sustainable materials.

CHAIRMAN QUOTE 

The JUST 100 Rankings are the only measure of how the nation’s largest corporations are performing on the business issues that matter most to Americans. The issues – which include paying a fair, living wage, creating jobs in the U.S., supporting workforce retention and training, providing benefits and work-life balance, protecting customer privacy, minimizing pollution, and more – are defined annually by an extensive nationwide polling process done on a fully representative basis. The top 100 companies – the JUST 100 – are determined by scoring performance across the full range of criteria and comparing companies head-to-head.

JUST Capital is an independent nonprofit that demonstrates how just business – defined by the priorities of the public – is better business. JUST Rankings reveal which companies are doing the best job of creating value for their stakeholders, and consistently show that the companies that score best also outperform their peers financially.

Compared to their Russell 1000 peers, companies in the JUST 100 on average:

• Pay 11.8 percentage points more of their workers a family sustaining living wage (78.3%).
• Provide 7.2 more hours of career development training per employee.
• Offer 2 more weeks of paid parental leave for both primary caregivers and secondary caregivers. 
• Intake 99% less water per revenue dollar.
• Emitted 42% less metric tons of CO2 per revenue dollar.
• Used 29.6 percentage points more renewable energy as a proportion of their total energy use.
• Have a 4% higher profit margin, 2.9% higher return on equity, and 1.2% higher dividend yield.

“American capitalism has to work for more Americans. For this to happen, the private sector, and especially big corporations, must take the lead in creating value for all their stakeholders,” said JUST Capital CEO Martin Whittaker. “That’s exactly what the JUST 100 are doing. They show that just business is better business.”

For the annual Rankings, JUST Capital collects and analyzes corporate data to evaluate the 1,000 largest public U.S. companies across 20 Issues identified through comprehensive, ongoing public opinion research on Americans’ attitudes toward responsible corporate behavior. JUST Capital has engaged more than 170,000 participants, on a fully representative basis, since 2015.

CNBC will delve into the data, highlighting company-specific results and showcasing key stakeholder performance stories about this year’s JUST 100 leaders across the network’s broadcast and digital platforms at cnbc.com/just100. An exploration of the JUST 100 companies can be found at justcapital.com/rankings.