New index ranks corporate leaders in renewable energy purchases

Once again, technology giant Intel gets kudos for being the biggest corporate purchaser of renewable energy among big public companies that reveal that sort of thing.

Intel tops the "Corporate Renewable Energy Index," which is a new ranking based on surveys conducted by the Bloomberg New Energy Finance group with backing from wind company Vestas Energy. There are 176 companies listed altogether, after the research checked up on more than 1,000 businesses in total. Those companies were picked for their sheer size in terms of market capitalization, so this is the biggest of the big.

In 2010, Intel procured nearly 1.5 billion giga-watt hours of renewable energy. Following Intel are two other companies that show up, not coincidentally, on the Green Power leader lists that I have been following for some time. They are:

Kohl's, which ranks highest in terms of the amount of renewable energy is uses compared with actual overall electricity consumption.
Whole Foods Market, which leads in wind-specific renewable procurement. All of its renewable energy is from wind projects. (Two other leaders in wind are Toronto-Dominion Bank with 78 percent of its renewables from wind and Adobe Systems with 65 percent.)

One notable trend: Even though the United States gets knocked for being behind its international peers in corporate sustainability initiatives, all three of those companies are based in North America.

Here are some other sector leaders in the index, which will be served up as part of the Bloomberg Terminal services used by traders.