Renewable Energy Companies: The Largest Players and How the Industry Works

Renewable energy companies are the businesses that build, own, make the equipment for, or sell power from wind, solar, hydro, bioenergy and geothermal sources. The phrase covers a very wide range: a European utility running tens of gigawatts of wind farms, a Chinese factory shipping solar panels by the gigawatt, and a local installer fitting rooftop panels are all “renewable energy companies”.

This guide sorts them into types, lists the largest players in each group with dated figures from company reports and industry trackers, and explains why the rankings change depending on what you measure. It describes companies by physical size, not share price, and it is not investment advice.

How big is the renewable energy industry?

The companies on this page are operating in a market that is growing fast. According to IRENA’s Renewable Capacity Statistics 2026, the world added a record 692 GW of renewable capacity in 2025, bringing the global total to about 5,149 GW (IRENA capacity highlights 2026). Renewables made up 85.6% of all new power capacity built that year (IRENA press release).

Solar did most of the work. IRENA counted about 511 GW of new solar, roughly three quarters of all renewable additions, and about 159 GW of new wind (IRENA). China, the US and the EU together accounted for 550 GW, or 79.5%, of the new renewable capacity (IRENA press release). That geography explains a lot about the company lists below: the largest manufacturers are mostly Chinese, while the largest owners and operators are mostly European and North American utilities and investment groups.

If you want the basics of each technology first, see our guide to renewable energy sources.

The main types of renewable energy companies

Before ranking anyone, it helps to separate four kinds of business. They earn money in very different ways, and a “top 10” list that mixes them is comparing unlike things.

Type	What they do	How size is usually measured	Examples (this page)
Generators and utilities	Own and run wind farms, solar parks, hydro dams; sell the electricity	Installed or managed capacity (GW), generation (TWh)	Enel, Iberdrola, Brookfield Renewable, Ørsted
Equipment manufacturers	Make wind turbines, solar modules, inverters, batteries	Annual installations or shipments (GW)	Goldwind, Vestas, Envision, JA Solar, Trinasolar
Developers and builders	Find sites, get permits, finance and construct projects, often selling them on	Development pipeline (GW)	Many utilities also do this in-house
Retailers and installers	Sell green tariffs or install rooftop solar for homes and businesses	Customers, installations	Mostly local and regional firms

Big groups often sit in more than one row. Iberdrola, for example, generates power, develops new projects and runs electricity networks. Brookfield Renewable owns operating assets and reports a development pipeline of more than 200 GW (Brookfield 2025 annual report).

Largest renewable energy companies by capacity (generators)

For companies that own power plants, the most common size measure is the renewable capacity they own or operate, in gigawatts. The table uses each company’s own end-2025 figures. Definitions differ (some count “managed” capacity including partly owned plants, others count consolidated capacity), so treat small gaps as noise.

Company	Home country	Renewable capacity (end-2025)	Notes	Source
Enel	Italy	About 68 GW managed (67.7 GW pro forma)	Total installed capacity 92.8 GW, including 3.4 GW of batteries	Enel bulletin
Brookfield Renewable	Canada/Bermuda	About 47,200 MW operating	More than 96% of the portfolio is renewable; 8,000 MW commissioned in 2025	Brookfield
Iberdrola	Spain	46,162 MW	79.1% of 58,343 MW total capacity	Iberdrola
Ørsted	Denmark	18.5 GW installed	10.2 GW of it offshore wind, with 8.1 GW more offshore under construction	Ørsted annual report; results announcement

Enel describes itself as the world’s largest renewable energy operator on the basis of its roughly 68 GW of managed renewable capacity (Enel 2025 report summary).

Iberdrola’s mix as an example

Iberdrola’s fact sheet shows what sits behind a headline number. Of its 46,162 MW of renewables at December 2025, onshore wind was 21,132 MW, hydro 12,855 MW, solar 8,733 MW and offshore wind 2,516 MW, with batteries growing from 215 MW to 683 MW in a year (Iberdrola). Hydropower is a large share for many older European utilities because their dams were built decades before modern wind and solar; see hydroelectric power for how that technology works.

Brookfield Renewable shows why generation and pipeline matter alongside capacity. Its 2025 annual report gives annualized long-term average generation of about 121,900 GWh from its roughly 47,200 MW, says it brought online about 8,000 MW of new capacity during the year (more than double its previous delivery), and reports an advanced-stage development pipeline of about 84,000 MW within the wider pipeline of over 200 GW (Brookfield 2025 annual report). A large pipeline is not the same as operating plants, though: projects in development can be delayed, resized or cancelled, so it is best read as a measure of ambition rather than of current size.

What about NextEra and the big Chinese state groups?

US-based NextEra Energy and large Chinese state-owned generators are often named in lists of the biggest clean power companies. We have left them out of the table because the published figures we found use different, non-comparable definitions (for example, total generation and storage capacity versus renewable capacity alone), and some came only from secondary sources. We will add them once a like-for-like figure from a primary filing is available.

Largest wind energy companies (turbine manufacturers)

Wind turbine makers are ranked by how many gigawatts of turbines they install in a year, or over their lifetime. The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) publishes the industry’s main supply-side ranking.

In 2025, a record year, the top five installers were all Chinese for the first time (GWEC):

Rank (2025)	Manufacturer	Installed in 2025
1	Goldwind	29.7 GW
2	Envision	21.8 GW
3	Windey	19.8 GW
4	Mingyang	18.6 GW
5	SANY	15.1 GW

The lifetime picture is different. GWEC reports that Vestas remains first on cumulative installations and became the first turbine maker to pass 200 GW, with more than 201 GW, followed by Goldwind (163 GW), Siemens Gamesa (148 GW), GE Vernova (125 GW) and Envision (103 GW). Five manufacturers have now installed more than 100 GW each.

Outside mainland China, the 2025 order was Vestas (12.9 GW), Nordex (7.7 GW), GE Vernova (5.8 GW), Siemens Gamesa (5.4 GW) and Envision (4.2 GW), per the same GWEC release. Other trackers produce slightly different numbers: BloombergNEF put the 2025 global market at 169 GW against GWEC’s 178 GW, with Goldwind at 29.3 GW (BloombergNEF). Both agree on the leader.

To understand what these companies are building, read our guides to wind energy and offshore wind.

Largest solar companies (module manufacturers)

Solar panel manufacturing is even more concentrated in China. Wood Mackenzie’s ranking for the first half of 2025 scored 38 crystalline-silicon module makers on several factors, not only volume. JA Solar (91.7) and Trinasolar (91.6) shared the top spot (Wood Mackenzie), followed by Canadian Solar (90.4), JinkoSolar (88.8) and LONGi (87.0) (pv magazine).

Two numbers from the same report show the state of the industry:

• Concentration: the top ten shipped a combined 224 GW of modules, about 75% of global shipments in the half-year.
• Profitability: the same ten reported a combined net loss of USD 2.2 billion, which Wood Mackenzie attributes to steep module price falls. Non-Chinese companies in the top ten stayed profitable by focusing on premium and protected markets.

So “largest” and “healthiest” are not the same thing. Huge volumes have pushed panel prices down, which is good for anyone buying solar, but hard on the manufacturers. If you are sizing a home system rather than researching the industry, our solar panel calculator and how solar panels work guide are a better starting point.

Why rankings of renewable energy companies disagree

If you compare several “top renewable energy companies” lists online, they rarely match. Usually that is because they measure different things:

1. Capacity versus generation. A gigawatt of solar produces far less electricity in a year than a gigawatt of hydro, because the sun sets. A company with a lot of hydro can rank higher on generation than on capacity.
2. Owned versus managed. Some firms count every plant they operate, including ones partly owned by others; others count only their share.
3. Renewable versus “clean”. Clean energy lists sometimes include nuclear operators, which are low-carbon but not renewable. Our clean energy guide explains the difference.
4. Market value. Lists based on stock market value reward expected future growth and change daily. We do not publish them here.
5. Date. Companies add gigawatts every quarter. Always check the “as of” date.

Utilities that changed course

Some of today’s renewable leaders started as fossil fuel businesses. The clearest case is Denmark’s DONG Energy, whose name stood for Danish Oil and Natural Gas. After selling its upstream oil and gas business to INEOS, it announced on October 2, 2017 that it would rename itself Ørsted, after the Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted (Renewable Energy World). By the end of 2025 it reported 18.5 GW of installed renewable capacity, mostly offshore wind (Ørsted Annual Report 2025).

Researchers have looked at how widely such shifts happen. Alova (2020), in Nature Energy, analyses whether electric utilities around the world have adapted their portfolios of power plants to the energy transition, and Pickl (2019), in Energy Strategy Reviews, examines the renewable energy strategies of the oil majors. Both are listed below for readers who want the detail.

History of renewable energy companies

Renewable power companies are older than the term suggests. Many large utilities grew up around hydroelectric dams in the early twentieth century, which is why hydro still forms a big part of firms like Iberdrola today. The modern wind and solar industry is much younger, and its leadership has shifted quickly.

Year	Milestone	Source
2017	DONG Energy (Danish Oil and Natural Gas) announces its rename to Ørsted after selling its oil and gas business	Renewable Energy World
2025	Vestas becomes the first turbine maker to pass 200 GW installed	GWEC
2025	Chinese manufacturers take all five top spots in annual wind installations for the first time	GWEC
2025	Top ten solar makers ship 224 GW in H1 but post a combined USD 2.2 billion loss	Wood Mackenzie
2025	World adds a record 692 GW of renewable capacity	IRENA

How to judge a renewable energy company yourself

Whether you are choosing a green electricity supplier, a solar installer or just reading the news, a few checks help:

• Read the annual report. Large companies publish capacity by technology. Look for the date and whether figures are “installed”, “managed” or “consolidated”.
• Check the mix. A company can be called a renewable energy company while still running gas or nuclear plants. Iberdrola’s renewables are 79.1% of its capacity (Iberdrola); Brookfield reports more than 96% (Brookfield 2025 annual report).
• Look at what is under construction. Pipelines show direction, but projects under construction are much more certain than early-stage pipelines.
• For a local installer, ask for certifications, references and a written production estimate, and compare it with your own numbers from our electricity cost calculator.

Can you buy electricity from a renewable energy company?

Usually not directly from the giants on this page; most households buy renewable power through their own utility or retail supplier, which backs a green plan with renewable energy certificates.

Large generators such as Brookfield or Enel mostly sell power under long-term contracts to utilities and big corporate buyers, not to individual homes. What reaches a household is a green tariff or a retail plan whose renewable claim is tracked with certificates: one certificate stands for one megawatt-hour of renewable generation. Our guide to renewable energy credits explains how that tracking works and what to check in a plan’s small print.

If you want power that is more directly your own, rooftop panels are the main option. See how much solar panels cost for current prices, or, where state law allows it, a small plug-in solar kit. For the bigger picture of which technologies these companies build, start with clean energy.

Scientific references

• Alova, G. (2020). “A global analysis of the progress and failure of electric utilities to adapt their portfolios of power-generation assets to the energy transition.” Nature Energy, 5, 920–927. doi:10.1038/s41560-020-00686-5
• Pickl, M. J. (2019). “The renewable energy strategies of oil majors: From oil to energy?” Energy Strategy Reviews, 26, 100370. doi:10.1016/j.esr.2019.100370
• IRENA (2026). Renewable Capacity Statistics 2026. International Renewable Energy Agency. Highlights PDF

Bottom line

The largest renewable energy companies fall into two camps. Owners and operators such as Enel (about 68 GW managed), Brookfield Renewable (about 47.2 GW) and Iberdrola (46,162 MW) run the plants. Manufacturers such as Goldwind, Vestas, JA Solar and Trinasolar build the equipment, and most of them are now Chinese. Rankings depend on the metric and the date, so check the source behind any list. This page describes size only and is not investment advice.