ista helps people save energy in a simple and convenient way and make a contribution to climate protection. Our smart products and services create transparent consumption and make it easy for our customers and their tenants to switch to sustainable action.
Our Purpose
The vast majority of people would like to stop climate change and protect our planet. But what contribution can we as a company make? Making sustainable action simpler and more effective is part of ista's fundamental philosophy and its core business. With smart devices, software, apps and services, we help people make their contribution to climate protection. Our Purpose Statement expresses this guiding principle: "Switch to Smart – Data for a sustainable planet. With ista." We at ista transform a flood of data from complex metering systems into easily usable information. We make energy consumption visible and therefore savings potential tangible. We give feedback on consumption behaviour and concrete tips on how to use resources responsibly. So we make the complex challenge of climate protection clear and understandable and the switch to sustainability quicker and easier for our customers.
Fields of Action
Sustainability in five dimensions
We would like to support people in their efforts to save energy – and help them make their contribution to climate protection. We ourselves lead by example. We are engaged in five fields of action:
Hagen Lessing
CEO ista Group
We want to make a key contribution to climate protection so that future generations can inhabit a healthy, beautiful planet. We’ve therefore set ambitious climate targets. We aim to cut our carbon emissions to net zero by 2030. We’ll take the first additional steps starting in 2022. It’s worth mentioning that ista’s own operations have been carbon-neutral since June 2021. But we want to do even more, including in the dwellings and commercial properties we serve. That’s why we’re switching to digital services and meter-reading by radio.
Goals
Clear goals for greater sustainability
We have set ourselves a clear goal for each field of action in our sustainability strategy. To achieve these goals, we regularly measure our progress and communicate it in our annual progress report.
- Environment: We will be 2030 CO2-free (net zero) by 2030 – by acting in a resource-saving manner in all areas of our business (scope 1–2 and selected scope 3 categories)1.
- Markets: We will help our customers/users reduce their CO2 emissions by 10% by 2030 (base year: 2015).
- Employees: We want to further improve the general conditions for employee engagement and so maintain our engagement score at the very high level of 80 in the period through to 2030.2
- Partners: By the end of 2021, we want to calculate the CO2 emissions of our supply chain and set an ambitious goal for CO2-free upstream products.
- Society: We will create opportunities for our employees to invest at least 5,000 hours a year in promoting climate protection in society.
1 Scopes 1-3 cover various kinds of climate-damaging emissions (GHG emissions): direct GHG emissions, indirect energy-related GHG emissions and further indirect GHG emissions.
2 The engagement score is determined as part of the ista-wide staff survey. On a scale from 0 to 100, it measures how strong the employees' work engagement is.
Sustainability Management
Strong structures for implementation
Sustainability is an integral part of our corporate strategy. This is evident in our structures. Sustainability activities are the direct responsibility of the top management. The Sustainability Delegates coordinate our international activities, they bring ideas from their countries to the table. So we ensure that our sustainability engagement has a holistic, forward-looking focus. We use smart and innovative tools, including our corporate sustainability software, to ensure we keep improving our sustainability performance.
Standards
Clear principles that guide our actions
To shape change effectively, we are guided by internationally recognised external standards.
> Respect for human rights and international ethic standards
> Contributions to national and international climate and environmental policy
Values and Guiding Principles of the ista Identity
We link our financing to progress on sustainability – for added value that contributes to climate goals
In addition to the internationally recognised standards, we have defined internal values and guiding principles for our actions. Five elements form the foundation: our Purpose, our Mission, our Vision, our Leadership Principles and our Shared Values. It is on this foundation that we build our ista identity.
ista has made a clear commitment to sustainability. We lead the way in energy management and environmental protection - which is why we also link our financing to progress in this area. In 2020, we concluded a new ESG-linked (Environmental, Social and Governance) syndicated loan for up to 1.85 billion euros. With this kind of loan, the variable interest rates are also linked to the fulfilment of sustainability targets. In our case, they are based on the goals of our sustainability strategy. If we achieve them, we can reduce the interest rates; on the other hand, the interest rates will rise if we miss the targets. The key sustainability figures are audited by SGS-TÜV Saar GmbH. The term of the loan is five years, including a one to two-year extension option.
Learn more about ista's sustainable activities!
In our latest progress report, you can read more about the measures we are pursuing to achieve our sustainability goals.
Climate Protection at the Heart of Corporate Strategy
ista already operates CO2-neutral and intends to become carbon-free (net zero) by 2030.
* The engagement score is determined as part of the ista-wide staff survey. On a scale from 0 to 100, it measures how strong the employees' work engagement is.
