There are lots of ideological reasons to invest in companies committed to being a part of the solution to climate change. But there's also a greedy reason.

Companies that have been the best at improving their carbon efficiency since 2012 have dramatically outperformed the ones that have been the worst at it, according to a new report published on Wednesday by the world's largest asset manager BlackRock (BLK).

The report analyzed the stock market performance of the more than 1,850 companies that have entered into the Carbon Disclosure Project. It includes everyone from energy and auto companies like BP(BP) and General Motors (GM) to tech companies like IBM (IBM, Tech30).

BlackRock, which manages nearly $5 trillion, analyzed the data to determine which companies did the best job of cutting their pollution relative to annual sales.

The 20% of companies best at slashing their carbon intensity beat the world stock market by almost 6%. The worst 20% of companies trailed the market by nearly 6%. That's a big difference.